The Blogging of the President: 2004

Three great points from talk by Jay Rosen of NYU and PressThink

1. Bloggers were the news.
2. 40 years of television shaping conventions is over
3. Transformation of media continues.

At the Dem Convention blogs were certainly seen as a threat by the established media of tv, radio, magazines and newspapers. "I think that bloggers have put the issue of professionalism under attack" said Thomas McPhail, professor of media studies in the New York Times. Even a political cartoonist took a swipe.

Any new medium threatens the established media. In the 1950's television news coverage was seen as unprofessional and not worthy of being called news. It was said to have presented an unrealistic view of the process. Sounds like what critics said of blog coverage now.

Blogs, like other media, uniquely present an event. Television has given us the "sound bite" and "speech over by 11:00." Newspapers provide in-depth reports. And blogs provide the hyperlinked post which other media can not provide. Each medium provides yet another glimpse of what is really happening.

Once you realise that each medium can uniquely present an event, then it is easier to accept blogs as a news medium that deserves a place at the table. And because blogs provide a different type of coverage they will develop their own "journalistic" standards. Some will come from leaders. Some from learning from mistakes. Eventually these will be recognised and people can stop arguing that bloggers are not journalists. 

Faux News provides some views that are so sad to make you laugh. Here is Eschaton summary of Bill O'Reilly's comments on arts funding at a The Creative Coalition event.

By the end, I think a reasonable summation of his final argument was: The reason there isn't enough education funding for the arts is that celebrities have shamefully failed to use their powers of public persuasion to convince people to support more arts funding, and this is a travesty about which they should be horribly ashamed even though more federal arts funding would be a bad thing.

Not sure I agree that Anime makes Disney animated motion pictures obsolete, but this tetrad certainly makes you think.

The book Laws of Media was published after McLuhan's death. According to Eric McLuhan this was a big editorial effort. Some tetrads did not make it into the book. In McLuhan Studies Issue 5: The Missing Media Laws there are Tetrads on Unisex, Heterosexual, Homosexuality/Lesbianism, Anaesthesia, Dream and Bed. How the bed flips (reverses) into a trap is interesting alone.

How do you demonstrate McLuhan's Laws of Media on the Web? Daniel Merlin Goodbrey creatively applies the Tetrad to webcomics using a webcomic.

I ran The Program Store and Diskcovery for a number of years. For a few of the big names in software, I was one of their first customers. I was always surprised as the stores struggled how few companies helped out who had made it big. I would be remiss if I did not say Broderbund was loyal and generous.

At work, many employees who are near retirement just had their post-retirement health insurance drastically changed. So much so that people will have to consider working another year or two! What loyalty is that?

This is certainly not what I try to teach my kids.

This is an example of who I image people could contribute to tetrad (Laws of Media) on a given human innovation. Howard Rheingold in TheFeature wrote about a tetrad for Mobile Media and then asked for comments. This represents part of what I want to design, but with a better, though at this stage undefined, method of commenting and browsing other contributions of tetrads and comments.

What would Marshall McLuhan, visionary prophet of pre-Internet media, say about mobile telephony, texting, the mobile Web, and the always-on world of wireless devices?

Besides getting my blog working again after my vacation, I've been working on a new project. I don't have all of the details worked out, but the concept is to create a type of group blog based on McLuhan's New Laws of Media or Tetrad. Anyone would be able to contribute to part or all of a tetrad on any human innovation. I'm trying to set up a wireframe/prototype to demonstrate what I'm thinking about and hope to post it before the end of the month.

Working name is Interactive Laws of Media, for now.

Here a good explanation of the tetrad by John Hartery.  I point to some tetrad examples on the web in the coming days.

My blog is working again. My ISP moved my files to a new server and forgot to tell me that the file structure changed. I've been working on a new project based on McLuhan's Laws of Media. I'll have details soon and ask for comments, if any one is reading.

Also added a site meter counter on the lower right of my site skin to see if anyone is reading. Not that I need people to read to write, but curious.