New Media

Hello.

The reason that i signed up for this site is to communicate with others with the intention of advancing ideas while keeping both the drones and the choir at bay. For example, I hear what sounds like an airplane outside my office window; it could be an airplane, or it could be a drone. It's gone now. Forget it. Likewise, I asked a preacher one time if he ever Really felt like he was "preaching to the choir". It was an odd, but interesting moment, as we looked at each other, maybe thinking about how "Litmus test liberals" and "Fundamentalist reactionaries" are pretty much the same.

At least that's what I was thinking about at the time. The thing that I didn't like about listening to them was that it wasn't original music, and much too didactic.

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So how's this for a contrarian question for a start:

Who, or What, Defines the "News Cycle"?

I have a story today that comes from my predilection to “self-syndicate”, meaning that I post my stories far and wide, in the same way a newspaper columnist is syndicated nationally—or beyond.

After I post, I know others will also post my stories to their sites, a topic that was itself the subject of a recent conversation.

To keep track of it all, I use the Google...but I recently wondered if that’s actually the most effective tool for the job—or not—so as an experiment I recently challenged several search engines to go out and seek the same search term.

We find out today...and the results are, indeed, interesting.

Our favorite irascible media tyrant is in the news once again, and once again it's time for me to bring you a story of doing one thing while wishing for another.

In a November 6th interview, Sky News Australia's David Speers spent about 35 minutes with the CEO of NewsCorp, Rupert Murdoch; the conversation covering topics as diverse as software piracy, world economics, the role of Fox News (and Fox NewsPinion©) in American politics, a strange defense of Glenn Beck, and, not very long afterwards, an even stranger defense of immigration.

We have heard a lot about the...how can I put this politely...challenges Murdoch seems to face associating factual reality with his reality, and we could have lots of fun going through his factual misstatements--but instead, I want to take on one specific issue today: Rupert Murdoch says he hates it when people steal his content from the Internet to draw readers to their sites...which is funny, if you think about it, because he has no problem at all stealing my content (and lots of yours, as well) for his sites.