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By Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
I'll be in Washington, D.C. at an International
Women's Media Foundation workshop through Wednesday, so the next blog
posts will be Thursday, June 12.
June 6, 2003 6:05 p.m. - (Previous
edition of this weblog)
Webby
Award winners: Both official and People's Voice awards, chosen
by the public, provide a week's worth of good links, as the seventh annual
"best of the web" winners are published.
Best news site: Google
News, with no reporters or editors on board. The People's Voice choice
for news was BBC News
Online.
My longtime favorite, the elegant and minimalist
Orisinal.com, took home the Games prize.
Link
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College
Radio Will Stream On: From Wired,
A new agreement will allow college radio stations to pay a more palatable
price to webcast music, but still saddles them with limitations on what
they can play and when.
Over the weekend, educational and other noncommercial broadcasters
reached a settlement with the recording industry on royalty rates for
streaming music over the Internet. The Digital Millennium Copyright
Act requires that the artists and labels be paid when their songs are
streamed.
Under terms of the agreement, stations will pay a flat rate of $250
for use of songs in 2003. In 2004, schools will pay $250 or $500, depending
on the size of the school's enrollment. Other noncommercial broadcasters
will pay roughly the same amount. That's a lower price than the per-song
and per-listener royalty fees set by the Librarian of Congress last
year in an effort to comply with the DMCA.
... The RIAA's rates are based on an average of 200 simultaneous listeners
per month. Once a station surpasses this, they must pay .251 cents per
listener, per hour, making it financially difficult for webcasters to
greatly expand their audience.
Link
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Meet
the executioner: ArabNews interviews Saudi Arabia’s leading
executioner, Muhammad Saad Al-Beshi, who will behead up to seven people
in a day.
Does he think people are afraid of him? “In this country we have
a society that understands God’s law,” he says. “No
one is afraid of me. I have a lot of relatives, and many friends at
the mosque, and I live a normal life like everyone else. There are no
drawbacks for my social life.”
Link
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City
Lights Bookstore (and Publishing) turns 50: From the San Francisco
Chronicle,
 ...there
it is, City Lights
Bookstore, with a fresh coat of creamy paint, San Francisco's dream
of itself ever since Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, its poet owner, was tried on obscenity charges in
1957 for publishing Allen
Ginsberg's "Howl."
Fifty years have passed since it opened, during which North Beach has
seen the flight and return of artists and writers as rents fluctuate.
But the bookstore has stayed right there, a mecca for the dispossessed
and the disenchanted, the poets and the pilgrims.
Like any 50-year-old with a rebellious past and a revolutionary future,
City Lights is of a mind to throw itself a party when the big birthday
comes along. Events are scattered all through June, starting tonight.
The revolutionaries are catching planes, jumping in their cars or fighting
crosstown traffic from the Mission and the Excelsior. The public is
invited to everything, and everything is free (except Friday's Poetry
Dance, which is a fund-raiser).
...City Lights Publishing has brought out everything from Ginsberg's
"Howl" to works by Charles
Bukowski, Paul
Bowles, Gary
Snyder and William Burroughs.
Alejandro
Murguia's "This
War Called Love" won an American Book Award. The store has
held benefits for the United Farm Workers, sit-ins and protest marches
-- fighting the banks and the war makers. In 1988, it got 12 streets
in North Beach named after San Francisco writers and six years later
an alley renamed Via Ferlinghetti -- breaking tradition to name a street
after a living writer.
...Nancy Peters, who arrived on the scene in 1971 and is now a co-owner
with Ferlinghetti (she's married to poet Philip
Lamantia), bought the building with him in 1999. They also established
the City Lights Foundation, which among other projects pays to publish
San Francisco's poet laureates -- we're on our third. The first was
Ferlinghetti. A year later, the store was named city landmark No. 228.
Upstairs in the warren of offices behind the beat and poetry sections,
a trim and smiling Peters says, "When you're both an icon and iconoclastic,
it's a balancing act." ...
Link
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Court:
Cell phone users can keep numbers when switching; AP reports,
Cell phone users should be allowed to keep their numbers when they
switch to new providers, a federal court ruled Friday in rejecting an
appeal by wireless companies.
Consumer advocates say not having that option is one of the biggest
barriers preventing more wireless customers from switching in search
of better service and prices. The Federal Communications Commission
is requiring wireless carriers to provide "number portability"
by November 24.
Verizon Wireless and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association,
an industry group, challenged the requirement in April, telling the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the FCC overstepped
its authority. They argued the rule will raise costs while doing little
to promote competition.
Related: FCC
Proposes to Free More Spectrum for Wireless Broadband
Link
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This is a crosspost from The
Station Fire Weblog:
Upcoming DVD release party: The release party for A Call For
Action -- a DVD of benefit performances on Feb. 18 by 18 bands --
will be Wednesday, June 18 from 6 - 1 p.m. at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel,
Providence. Eight of the bands that appear in the DVD concert film will
play, and there'll be a live auction of rock and roll memorabilia hosted
by comedian Charlie Hall, with proceeds going to the Station
Fire Relief Fund.
The event will kick off with the reggae band The Psycads, followed by
Mark Cutler and The Schemers (Bob Giusti, Emerson Torrey & Jim Berger),
Mr. Lincoln, Jon Tierney and The Truth, Ricky Valente, Fungus Amungus,
The Stereobirds and Green Tea.
Admission for the event is $10, with proceeds from the sale of the DVD
to benefit the Station Fire Relief Fund. For more information or to purchase
a DVD, go to www.acallforaction.com
or call (401) 861-4756.
Here's a
preview of the DVD; tunes and bands on it are
Comeback, John Tierney & The Truth Four Minute Sneeze,
Jim James Band
Hey Shark, Betty Finn
Some Fun, Dino Club
Blackout, The Stereobirds (Formerly Known As The Mockingbirds)
A Long Song, Some Weird Band
Monkey Boy, Mr. Lincoln
Please Don't Leave Me This Morning, Green Tea
Ain't That Peculiar, Rick Mendes & The Nightbirds
Every Day Is Like A Holiday, Psycads
Uncle Sam, Fungus Amungus
Treat Her Right, Young Neal & The Vipers
I'm Old, But I Ain't Dead, Dave Howard & The Highrollers
Back And Forth, Turning Blue
The Dreamer, Ricky Valente
Link
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Incomplete
Manifesto for Growth: A lively right-brain way to end the week,
a link from artist/blogger Judy
Watt. The author is Toronto-based designer
Bruce Mau:
 In
1998, my wife's sister was producing a literary publication in Toronto
and asked if I might contribute. At the time the studio was growing
and changing, and the questions around how we work, or should work,
were in my mind. I was looking at my own beliefs, motivations and strategies
and thought it might be productive to articulate them. The text of the
incomplete manifesto is the outcome.
Some of my favorites:
9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin
is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black.
Free yourself from limits of this sort.
18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too
far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from
the rest of the world.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s
not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing
the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”
40. Avoid fields. Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory
regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are
often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary
processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
Link
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See you next Thursday!
June 5, 2003 6:45 p.m. - (Previous
edition of this weblog)
The
Station Fire weblog has been updated.
How about selling overnight parking permits, mayor?
It's good news that Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline has been able
to negotiate payments in lieu of taxes with four private colleges and
universities in the city -- Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design,
Providence College and Johnson & Wales University. (Projo.com,
reg. req.)
The mayor noted that the city's private colleges and universities own
"more than three-quarters of a billion dollars in tax-exempt city
real estate." As a Providence homeowner who has watched more and
more private property go into Brown's portfolio over time, I think it's
a long overdue move.
The next logical step would be to have some of those 25,000 students
pick up some of the shortfall in the budget.
On-street overnight parking is prohibited in Providence, and many of
the apartments rented by students -- often three-deckers built in anticipation
of one family per floor -- don't have enough parking to go around. Tickets
are issued, but students are often long gone (or have changed their registrations
in desperation) before the fines can be collected.
I'd like to see on-street parking permits -- windshield stickers could
be issued free to to resident homeowners, and made available to students
and other renters for a yearly fee. The money would come up front, largely
freeing police from writing tickets in the wee hours, and creating fewer
scofflaws to chase each May. Cars parked overnight without stickers could
be hit with fines that would make purchasing a sticker a bargain, by comparison.
Students and others who rent apartments without parking would welcome
this solution. In my younger days, I lived in a sprawling East Side apartment
building with four spaces for 18 apartments. The landlord rented all apartments
with parking (scum!), so there was a nightly scramble with lots of losers.
I would have welcomed the chance to buy a parking sticker.
Link
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Times they are a-changin': Some of the most
interesting fallout from the resignation
of the New York Times two top editors (NYT, reg.req.) today
is to be found in the Letters
section of Jim
Romenesko's column at Poynter.org.
From Jeff
Greenfield on CNN: (unedited transcript)
JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: As it happens, Leon, last
night at one of those endless cocktail party -- book party things that
dominates Manhattan in journalistic circles, I ran into one of the member
of "The New York Times" editorial board whose account of what
Howell Raines has been going through this last month makes the public
coverage of it almost look tame, that the anger within "The New
York Times" on everyone from secretaries up to and including assistant
managing editors at what has happened has been almost ferocious.
The sense that "The Times," which is the paper of record,
the place that everybody often cites as accurate, a paper that has been
dominant in journalistic circles for the better part of a century has
suffered a major blow and this is a combination of what Jayson Blair
did, the response to it which in the view of some people at "The
Time" was inadequate, and then to be blunt, the leadership style
of Howell Raines which is pretty tough.
I mean editors traditionally are tough but the truth of the matter
is that Howell Raines, whether fairly or not, did not have a lot of
support within the newsroom, and the Jayson Blair incident, the resignation
of Rick Bragg a featured reporter on "The Times" who used
stringers' material without perhaps giving enough credit, these stories
began to undermine and continue to undermine Howell Raines' position
within the newsroom.
And, if this account by this one person is correct, every effort to
staunch this, every effort to kind of shore up "The Times"
and say let's get on with it, just was met with failure because of this
combination of events.
New
York Times publisher's memo to staff
Link
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Casting call: Want to volunteer as an extra
in a film-fest trailer?
To promote the 2003
Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF) scheduled for August
5-10th, says the press release, a "35 mm commercial/trailer sponsored
by NBC" will be shot Monday, June 30 at the Columbus Theater on Broadway
in Providence.
There's no pay, apparently, but volunteers receive one free pass to
any RIIFF event and a 2-for-1 pass to the Columbus Theater.
If you're interested, email your name and contact information to RIIFFCommercial@aol.com
and they'll get back to about when to be there and what to wear.
Link
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Martha
Stewart: Woulda, coulda, shoulda... PC Magazine columnist
John C. Dvorak is
guest-blogging on the right side of BoingBoing
for a spell, and offers a glimpse of an easier road not taken by the indicted
ex-CEO:
When the Martha Stewart story first broke an owner of a small stock
brokerage (a friend) called me to tell me the "real" story
about what happened. This is one of those communites where everyone
knows everyone else's business. The Martha Stewart scenario played like
this: The CEO, Sam Waskal, of ImClone got the bad news about his product
not making the FDA cut. He calls his broker to dump the stock. He knows
he's doomed. They tell him he simply can't because of his position.
Freaked out, he goes and tells other family members to dump their stock
to salvage what he can of his fortune. Some start to sell. Martha gets
a call from her broker, who also handles some ImClone accounts and is
paying attention to trades in the office. He tells Martha that Sam's
daughter is selling off her shares. He asks her what should he do with
hers. They may have had a chat, I don't know. I suspect a "What
do YOU think I should do?" would be asked by Martha and any broker
looking for commissions would say "sell!" Whatever happened,
she sells.
...But instead of just saying, "Uh, my broker told me that others
were selling, so I decided to sell too" wouldn't suffice for her.
She had to dream up the complex stop-loss order nonsense because she
could never just act like a normal person and panic sell, could she?
...
Link
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Amazing collages: Issue
4 of RODEO 27's "Splash Screens Of Infinity." Select a theme
from the drop-down box at upper left, and keep scrolling to the right
to see the entire collage. via Travelers
Diagram.
Link
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June 4, 2003 7:15 p.m. - (Previous
edition of this weblog)
When it comes to weddings, call me Rev. Lennon:
Today, in the name of investigative journalism, I became a minister
in the Universal Life Church
-- which is legal in all 50 states -- and I could marry you now. Here's
my certificate. The literature accompanying it says I can now legally
perform every rite except circumcision. (I'd have passed on that one anyway.)
It all began with this story in today's Journal (reg.req.):
Bells
are ringing over wedding ceremonies; House members are objecting
to a new Senate restriction on giving special permission to preside
over a nuptial.
A number of couples preparing to say "I do" this summer are
facing an unexpected glitch in their wedding plans: a legislative squabble
at the General Assembly.
The couples are those seeking special permission from lawmakers to
have a friend, family member, or out-of-state official conduct their
ceremony. Such matters have usually been considered routine.
But this year, key senators balked at giving just anyone permission
to preside over a duo's entry into wedded bliss. House members objected
to the new Senate restriction, and the ensuing clash has ensnared every
pending request.
... in March, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Michael McCaffrey
announced that the Senate would approve marriage bills only if the person
involved has the authority to conduct a wedding back home. McCaffrey
said committee members wanted to ensure that people have some qualifications
to do the job.
..."In Vegas they let Elvis marry people," said House Minority
Leader Robert Watson, R-East Greenwich. "If two individuals want
a particular person to marry them, for whatever reasons they personally
deem appropriate, I just don't see why we should be involved in superseding
those decisions."
...Rep. Raymond Gallison, D-Bristol, is trying to help an Attleboro
lawyer get permission to perform a June 21 wedding for friends at Colt
State Park. Gallison, whose bill is up for a House vote today, said
he can understand the suggestion that such officiants should have some
qualifications. But he notes that people could become a minister over
the Internet, "and Rhode Island will accept that."
 So
today, I did the deed. It took about 30 seconds, it's free, and it's legal.
I did get put on a mailing list, but may opt out at any time. I printed
my certificate
right here on the newsroom laser printer -- although the disclaimer at
the bottom mentions that to perform ministerial functions at prisons and
nursing homes, I might need to order an official certificate. ($49, I
think, for a package of hard-copy credentials, lapel badges, etc.)
There's an entire cosmology available for purchase on this site, but
for the purpose of getting around Rhode Island's wedding blockade, this
certificate will do. The pertinent laws
for each state are online; here's the Rhode Island entry, according
to the ULC:
Rhode Island
Everyone who has been, or is, the minister of any society professing
to meet for religious purposes, or incorporated for the promotion of
such purposes, and holding stated and regular services, and who has
been ordained according to the customs and usages of such society may
perform marriages. Ministers must obtain a license from the city or
town clerk before performing marriages. Ministers must endorse and return
the marriage license to the town or city clerk in which the marriage
was performed. For questions see the town or city clerk.
Lest this seem frivolous... At a wedding held last winter at the Bay
Voyage in Jamestown, we happened to be seated at the minister's table
during the reception. A distinguished middle-aged man, he had worn a Catholic
deacon's
stole during the ceremony. We asked where his church was, and he said,
"In California, actually, although I'm a deacon at St. XXX."
(church name withheld in case the pastor doesn't know about his sideline)
"Would that be the Universal Life Church?" I asked. "Yes."
he said.
See, anyone can do it.
Link
to this item | Comment
A
petition to reclaim the public domain: Cory Doctorow
(BoingBoing) neatly sums up Lawrence Lessigs's brainchild:
Lessig (that's Lawrence
Lessig, Stanford Law professor who argued the Eldred
vs. Ashcroft copyright case befoe the U.S. Supreme Court) and
company have authored a petition to Congress, asking them to pass the
Eric Eldred Act to preserve the public domain. Under this proposal,
rights-holders who want to retain their copyrights beyond 50 years need
to pay a dollar per work at the 50 year mark (tax-deductible) to register
the copyrights. When the Supremes heard the Eldred case, they heard
that 98% of the works in copyright are lying fallow, earning nothing
for anyone, out of print and not available to the public. In this proposal,
the 2% of copyrights that earn money can go on earning money, while
the remaining, vast majority will be rescued from history's dustbin.
One solution in particular that we ask Congress to consider is the
Public Domain Enhancement Act. See http://eldred.cc
This statute would require American copyright owners to pay a very
low fee (for example, $1) fifty years after a copyrighted work was
published. If the owner pays the fee, the copyright will continue
for whatever duration Congress sets. But if the copyright is not worth
even $1 to the owner, then we believe the work should pass into the
public domain.
This legislation would strengthen the public domain without burdening
copyright owners. It would also help clarify rights over copyrighted
material, which in turn would enable reuse of that material. The law
could thus help restore balance to the protection of copyright, and
support the public domain.
At Lessig's
blog, he reports 7,500 names on the petition as of now. This seems
a no-brainer. There's no reason to lock away all older literature just
so Disney can keep the rights to Steamboat Willie.
Link
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Microsoft
plays browser games: News analysis: Following its recent settlement
with AOL, Microsoft has let slip that it will stop making Internet Explorer
as a standalone product. But what does this mean for users?
At ZDNet:
Purveyors and consumers of Web content and software, already unsettled
by the pact between archrivals Microsoft and AOL, may be in store for
an even more radical upset: the end of Microsoft's standalone Internet
Explorer browser.
Brian Countryman, IE program manager, said that the software maker
is phasing out standalone versions of its Web browser.
Since then, Microsoft has struggled to reconcile Countryman's remarks
with promises that current users of the standalone version of IE will
be provided with upgrades.
...But having pushed its Web browser software with the help of its
OS monopoly, Microsoft now has the opportunity to reverse the process,
using its dominance in browsers to prod other customers to upgrade to
new versions of Windows.
Related: Microsoft
to discontinue Internet Explorer for Mac? At Mac Daily News.
Link
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26
Things | The International Photographic Scavenger Hunt
the assignment : to seek out the twenty six themes/objects
on the list and photograph them over the given period of time.
the aim of this photographic project is to make us open
our eyes and get creative with the things and people
around us, to see how we each interpret themes.
on tuesday july 1st 2003, 26 things to hunt for will be
posted on this website and you
are free to complete the project on or before thursday july 31st 2003.
come back friday august 1st to submit your 26 things website.
up for the challenge? let me know
as always, this is not a race. happy hunting!
Link
to this item | Comment
Beer
ice cream goes on sale (but not here). From the BBC:
Newcastle Brown Ale flavoured ice cream was launched on Tuesday by
Doddington Dairies, and will only be available during the summer months.
... Although the ice cream is made using the ale, under licence from
brewers Scottish and Newcastle, the cooking process means it contains
less than 1% alcohol.
Link
to this item | Comment
 Fine
mind candy:
The '80s Tarot: Thomas Dolby is The Magician, Annie
Lennox The High Priestess, Grace Jones is The Devil, Edward Scissorhands
The Moon, David Bowie is The Emperor. The Fool? Ferris Bueller...
The authors -- "megan leigh dorko and amber dorko stopper"
-- explain that "the deck was originally an online component of the
now-defunct cafe 80's magazine." Amber's blurb on the front of notsoswift.com
says she's " tarotviews, the newsletter of the tarot special interest
group of american mensa," among other things.
Link
to this item | Comment
Is
it Art or Crap? Can you tell the difference? A visual quiz.
Link
to this item | Comment
Conspiracy
theories thrive after Wellstone plane crash: From the Minneapolis
Star-Tribune.
Link
to this item | Comment
June 3, 2003 6:32 p.m. - (Previous
edition of this weblog)
FCC ruling ripples through media: The
effect of the FCC's decision yesterday to ease key media ownership rules
has yet to play out on the southern New England media landscape, but it
could be a long, wild ride.
Ian Donnis, news editor of the Providence
Phoenix, wrote
a long piece in last week's edition speculating on possible acquisitions.
Here's his overview of the media scene here:
IN SOME RESPECTS, the media landscape in Rhode Island — famously
dubbed by former ProJo scribe Elliot Jaspin as a reporter’s theme
park — may seem rich and varied. Experienced pros like Jack White,
Jim Taricani, and Jim Hummel lend enhanced stature to the three local
television affiliates. The competing radio talk-show hosts — Steve
Kass, John DePetro, Dan Yorke (disclosure: I’m a weekly guest
on his show), and Arlene Violet — are intelligent, knowledgeable,
and they often discuss serious topics. Local broadcasting was considerably
enhanced a few years ago with the addition of public radio station WRNI-AM.
Weekly papers and smaller dailies focus on different corners of the
state. There’s the Internet, of course. And the Providence Journal,
which has a venerable journalistic tradition and remains one of the
better papers of its size in the country, still occupies the top of
the heap.
Seen another way, however, Rhode Island is as gripped by media consolidation
as many other places — and probably even more so because of the
state’s tiny size.
Rhode Islanders reflexively turn to WJAR-TV (Channel 10), the state’s
first television station and a subsidiary of NBC, which is owned by
General Electric, a top superpower among the corporate elite. Atlanta-based
Cox Communications has a virtual cable TV monopoly, and Verizon towers
over telephone services. Radio colossus Clear Channel owns more than
1200 stations, four of them in the Ocean State, including WHJY-FM and
WHJJ-AM. (Citadel, another large radio player, owns a relatively paltry
205 stations, including WPRO-AM.) Three of the larger small dailies
in the region, the Times in Pawtucket, the Call in Woonsocket, and the
Herald News in Fall River, Massachusetts, are owned by the Journal Register
Company of New Jersey, which exemplifies a slimmed-down approach to
journalism. And Belo, whose holdings include 19 television stations
— reaching about 14 percent of television households in the US
— and four daily newspapers, has been the guiding force behind
Rhode Island’s dominant daily since buying the ProJo in 1997.
Today, the New Bedford Standard Times,
in a story headlined, "Changes
may loom for Boston, Providence markets," reports,
Jim Thistle, director of Boston University's Broadcast Journalism
program, predicted yesterday that both Boston and Providence will soon
see attempts by major newspaper publishers to acquire a television station.
And in Providence, that puts Channel
6 back into play, since the perpetually third-place Rhode Island
station is reportedly already for sale.
The likely suitor: the Belo
Corp., the Dallas-based owner of The
Providence Journal. Belo already owns 19 television stations.
Perhaps, but, according
to the Hampton Roads (Va.) Daily Press today,
Now that decades-old restrictions on media ownership have been lifted,
Hampton Roads, the 41st-biggest media market in the country, and nearby
Richmond are emerging as dynamic test beds for any resulting deal making.
...
Analysts expect The
Virginian-Pilot (newspaper's) parent, Landmark Communications, to
either buy a station or emerge as an acquisition target for the likes
of A.H. Belo, which owns Channel 13.
And the Austin (Texas) Statesman-American, a Cox newspaper, reports,
The first shift in Texas might come with the sale of Freedom Communications
Inc., which owns several newspapers in the Rio Grande Valley and one
broadcast station in Beaumont, and has been up for sale since March.
Groups said to be interested in buying the company include Gannett Co.
Inc., Hearst, E.W. Scripps Co., Belo and Knight Ridder Inc. -- all of
which own newspapers in Texas.
If all these speculative Belo purchases were to happen, that's quite
a buying spree.
How wild could all this get? South
Florida Sun Sentinel Business writer Joseph Mann reports,
Commenting on specific media groups, Merrill Lynch said it expected
Gannett to "continue to be opportunistic," while Knight-Ridder
would most likely stay in the newspaper business, although it would
"fit well" in a merger with McClatchy or A.H. Belo.
As for Boston, the Standard-Times reports,
... Mr. Thistle, who was news director at Boston Channels 4, 5 and
7, said the publisher on the prowl in Boston is likely to be the New
York Times Corp., which owns the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram
and Gazette.
WCVB-5 is owned by Hearst-Argyle, and "Channel 5 is the only major
market station that they have," Mr. Thistle said. "They don't
know quite how to deal with it."
What's more, he said, "If you look at Channel 5 and you look at
the news in the Globe, it does seem philosophically not to be a bad
fit."
Mr. Thistle also said there is a chance that media mogul Rupert Murdoch
will repurchase the Boston Herald from Patrick Purcell "and merge
it with what he already owns, Channel 25 Fox."
But this could all go up in smoke if Congress or the courts intervene.
CBS
reports,
On Wednesday morning, U.S. senators plan to grill the five FCC commissioners
in the wake of Monday's controversial 3-to-2 vote to loosen regulations
that restrict media ownership. See full story.
At least four of the 12 Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee,
which plans to hold the hearing, objected to the FCC vote. If they side
with the panel's 11 Democrats, they could pass a measure to reverse
the agency's decision and sent the issue to the full Senate.
Stay tuned...
Link
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The
Douglas Adams media archive: Before I launch into the next Big
Issue on the docket tomorrow, you might want to check out this collection
-- the late author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reading
this and other works, preserved as mp3s.
Link
to this item | Comment
Cap on paychecks: If you rely on overtime pay,
you might lose it. CBS
Market Watch reports on The Family Time Flexibility Act, which is
slated for a House vote Thursday:
The bill would give private-sector employees the option of receiving
paid time off, or comp time, in lieu of overtime pay. Employees eligible
for overtime now can only be paid in time-and-a-half wages.
If the bill becomes law, an employee working 60 hours in one week could
choose to be paid for 20 hours at time-and-a-half, or receive that time-and-a-half
in hours off, that is, 30 hours of paid leave.
Proponents say the law would give workers some much-needed flexibility
in their harried schedules, and that it's a perk public-sector employees
have enjoyed for more than a decade. Also, employers aren't required
to offer the benefit and employees are not required to use it.
... Some Republicans have criticized the proposal, at least one because
of a potential for employer abuse.
The Senate recently introduced a similar bill, likely to generate even
more of a tempest: In its current version, it proposes to change the
calculation of overtime so that an employee would have to exceed 80
hours in two weeks to qualify, rather than the current rule of 40 hours
in one week.
Opponents contend the House bill is a boon to employers, not workers,
because the change makes overtime work cheaper. If it passes, they say,
employers will favor those workers who opt for the time off, rather
than the wages. Those employees will be offered more overtime hours,
they say.
Unions are urging workers to oppose the bill, and a website
at unionvoice.org offers free faxes to lawmakers. The initiative appears
to have some clout. AP reports this afternoon (Unions'
lobbying barrage against comp time bill sends GOP searching for votes),
Labor unions fighting legislation to loosen overtime pay requirements
have won the support of a dozen or so moderate House Republicans, sending
the GOP searching for Democratic votes to save the bill before a vote
Thursday.
... The White House supports the bill, and its lobbyists were meeting
with lawmakers Tuesday.
Quinn said it wasn't clear whether the White House wants to ''expend
some political capital'' on the overtime bill. If administration officials
make clear they want the bill passed, some moderate Republicans could
return to the fold.
... Even if the bill is blocked, labor leaders face a second challenge
from the Labor Department. Officials there are overhauling the criteria
that determines which workers must get overtime pay. The final regulation,
which does not need approval by Congress, could be issued by fall.
Link
to this item | Comment
Be a donor: New York Times columnist Maureen
Dowd (reg. req.), who usually writes political columns,
this week tells a tale
of her 33-year-old niece, who gave half her liver to her uncle, Dowd's
brother Michael. (Livers regrow.)
The night nurse told Jennifer she was an oddity. "We don't see
many live donors," she said. "Not many people are that generous."
Dowd quotes Neal
Conan, host of Talk of the Nation on NPR,
"More than 80,000 Americans are on waiting lists for organ donations,
and most will never get them. Thousands on those lists die every year.
One big reason for the shortage is that families are reluctant to give
up their relatives' organs. Even when people filled out a donor card
or checked the organ donor box on their driver's license, family members
often refuse. ..."
Dowd herself writes, " I'm one of the scaredy-cats who never checked
the organ donation box or filled out the organ and tissue donor card.
... I had nutty fears, too, straight out of a Robin Cook medical thriller,
that they might come and pluck out my eyes or grab my kidney before I
was through with them."
But on Michael's birthday she downloaded the donor card, and filled it
in.
You can, too. The New England
Organ Donor Bank has stories, a FAQ and a link to fill out the Donor
Card and Information Request Form. Or call 800-446-NEOB and ask for
a brochure and a donor card.
It's uncomfortable to think about, but the gift of organs you won't need
any more just might be the finest thing you ever do.
Link
to this item | Comment
Moo: The blue cow is back. Projo's
Jack Perry reports (reg. req.),
The statue was found early this morning on the lawn of one its owners,
which a white sheet of paper attached, saying, "BHS Class of 2003."
The cownappers, apparently students from Barrington High School, did
not request a ransom payment. Instead, they left $30 with an apology
for a window they broke when removing the fiberglass figure from its
overnight storage shed, said Barrington Police Chief John LaCross.
Link
to this item | Comment
June 2, 2003
3,889 emails awaited me after a week away, 99 percent spam. I scanned
every subject line and sender's name before deleting, but I glazed over
at times. If you sent an email in the last ten days and don't hear from
me soon, please resend it. (For best results, make the subject "shenews"
or "blog.")
FCC
Votes to Ease Media Ownership Rules: At the Washington
Post (and everywhere else), which has a package on the controversy.
An ideologically fractured Federal Communications Commission voted
3 to 2 along party lines today to relax or eliminate some key media
ownership rules, allowing a newspaper to own a television station in
the same city and broadcast networks to buy more stations at the national
and local levels.
Kohl,
Feingold criticize FCC decision (AP):
Wisconsin Sens. Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold criticized Monday's decision
by the Federal Communications Commission to relax media ownership rules,
with Kohl announcing a congressional hearing on the vote.
The senators, both Democrats, have taken an active interest in the
issue. Kohl is the ranking member and former chairman of the Senate
Judiciary's antitrust subcommittee, and Feingold has introduced legislation
aimed at slowing consolidation in the radio industry.
Both serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Clear
Channel exec criticizes new FCC rules: (The FCC declined to raise
the ownership limit in the largest radio markets from eight to 10, as
Clear Channel had wanted.) From Louisville (Ky.) Business First,
Clear Channel Communications Inc., the parent company for Covington,
Ky.-based Clear Channel Radio, criticized new media ownership rules
approved by the Federal Communications Commission that would maintain
a limit on the number of stations a company can own in certain markets.
Mark Mays, president and chief operating officer of San Antonio, Texas-based
Clear Channel, charged the FCC with "missing the mark" in
its efforts to act in the public interest.
"This FCC action will extinguish the substantial consumer benefits
brought on by radio deregulation in 1996," Mays told the San Antonio
Business Courier. "Unfortunately, the FCC chose politics over the
public interest, and American consumers will be the ultimate victims."
Clear Channel, the nation's largest radio company, grew from about
40 radio stations in 1995 to more than 1,200 today. The company has
argued that deregulation helped to save the struggling radio industry.
From a Reuters package:
FACTBOX
- Changes to U.S. Media Ownership Rules (Reuters)
Senators
Confident Can Reverse FCC Rule:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of U.S. senators opposed
to television networks expanding their reach expressed confidence they
had the votes to roll back a rule adopted by communications regulators
on Monday.
The group said it was pressing ahead with legislation to retain limits
keeping a network from owning stations that together reach more than
35 percent of the national audience.
Once
Media Ownership Loosened, It's Off to Court:
Now that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to ease
restrictions on media ownership, the ultimate arbiter will be the courts
and possibly Congress, industry experts agree.
The
new FCC rules.
(pdf.)
Longtime radio guy Lou
Josephs comments, Mitch
Ratcliffe, too, and Dan
Gillmor is hopping mad: "Michael Powell and his damn-the-torpedos
colleagues have wounded democracy with their action today."
Link
to this item | Comment
Christmas on Mars? The
Beagle 2 project, the British-led effort to land on Mars, launched
this afternoon. Bloomberg
has the hard news, but dotmusic
has the fun stuff: That it's about the size of a bicycle wheel, that its
planned landing is set for Christmas Day, and that "An instrumental
track recorded by Blur
will be transmitted to signal the successful landing of the probe,
which is then programmed to dig into the rocks of the planet, searching
for the chemical signal of life.
Speaking to Radio 4 last year, Blur bassist Alex James described the
track as "a musical cave painting, a ponderous, clear tune",
loosely based on a mathematical sequence.
Link
to this item | Comment
Play
20 Questions against a computer: It works pretty well,
guessing on question number 20. If it guesses wrong, it keeps asking questions
and guesses again. Then it tells you where you misled it, in its opinion.
(As you'll see below, it obviously has no life experience.)
Here's how it scolded me:
You win
Play Again
You were thinking of a hibiscus.
Is it used during meals? You said No, I say Probably.
Can it fit in an envelope? You said No, I say Yes.
Can it float? You said Unknown, I say No.
Is it smooth? You said Partly, I say Doubtful.
Can it be washed? You said Yes, I say No.
Do you use it in your home? You said Yes, I say No.
Contradictions Detected
It does not matter if our answers disagree, over time the game will
change its answers to reflect common knowledge. If you feel that the
game is in error, the only way to fix it is to play again.
Link
to this item | Comment
Microsoft
to abandon standalone IE: So if you want to upgrade your browser
you have to buy a new operating system? What if you use a Mac, or Linux?
Related: The latest version of Mozilla 1.4, the open-source spinoff of
Netscape, has been released. Release
notes and download
page.
Also related: In the wake of last week's settlement in which, in return
for AOL's dropping its private antitrust suit against Microsoft, MS pays
AOL $750 million and AOL gets to use IE free for seven years, Netscape
is dead. But Mozilla may just cut loose and thrive on its own, as its
army of freelance coders marches on. By
Andrew Leonard in Salon. (Click through an ad for a free day pass.)
Link
to this item | Comment
Kilroy's
still here by Sean Penn. A .pdf of the actor's full-page ad in
the N.Y. Times. Story at Editor & Publisher:
Sean Penn Picks Up the Pen
Link
to this item | Comment
Runaway
train game: Orisinal makes some of the
most beautiful, simple online games on the web. Here's the newest.
Link
to this item | Comment
Star-crossed
cow
(projo.com, reg. req.): The 300-pound blue fiberglass
cow in front of Barrington's Imagine gift shop -- which has already survived
one challenge to its existence by the town -- has been swiped by thieves.
It was taken over the weekend from its garage, along with the rolling
cart that toted it out to the street each business day.
Police believe the cownapping was "more than a kids' prank because
of the work involved in removing the cow," said the owner.
If the cow comes home, it has a slot in Bristol's 4th of July parade.
Link
to this item | Comment
Catching up: Stories you might have missed from
last week.
Best
of Baghdad: What Tunes Reporters Listened To, at Editor & Publisher.
Rod
McKuen is ticked off: Poet-musician has harsh words for younger generations
Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com |
