Month: October 2003

Timothy Garton Ash

Suppose for a moment that there was no involuntary exercise of the creative imagination through memory. Suppose we had a perfect, impartial, scientific record of what really happened. Even then, we would still have almost nothing — and much too much. To study five years of the French Revolution in just one corner of Paris you would have to sit for five years in front of the screen.
– Timothy Garton Ash “On the Frontier” in The New York Review of Books, Nov. 7, 2002, p. 61

A blog for newspaper editors

Tom Mangan writes on the listserv for the Society of Professional Journalists:

Hi all,
Wanted to let you know about the Web log for newspaper editors I've been doing for the past couple months. It's called Prints the chaff, and includes daily links and commentary of interest to people in the newspaper biz. The focus is on editing but there's a fair amount of stuff of interest to anybody in the biz. If you remember a site I did several years ago called Newsies on the Web, well, it's much like that.
I realize most of the folks on this list are on the reporting side, but I'm reminded of that saying — keep your friends close and your enemies closer. If you wonder how the brain of an editor functions (and malfunctions), this might be the place to gain some insight.

Phone number portability in Canada

While much of the rest of the world takes the consumer-friendly position that wireless cell phone numbers ought to be portable, Canada still lags behind in this respect, my Globe colleague Dave Ebner reports this morning.

It's a shame,” said Eamon Hoey, a telecommunications consultant. “But there's no champion for this. The industry is not motivated. And the regulator is protecting them.”

Perfect PR

Just ran across an ad for the following book while catching up on my reading:

Feeding the Media Beast: An Easy Recipe for Great Publicity
By Mark Mathis
Explains how to deal with journalists in a systematic way from the newsperson's point of view and establishes only 12 rules that cover everything any PR person ever needs to now.

This book was published in July, 2002 by Purdue University Press.
Anyone reading this blog care to pass on these 12 rules or comment on this book? I'm curious.

The Decline of the Internet?

Researcher Eli Noam says in his paper, The Internet: Still Wide Open and Competitive?,:

“We have found pronounced horizontal and vertical trends of concentration in the Internet sector. What are the implications? It would take a lengthy essay to fully analyze this question. But some implications can be anticipated:

  1. Higher user prices, and a higher profitability of the major firms.
  2. A slowing of innovation and upgrade.
  3. Increased power of major Internet firms over:
    (a) its governance, standards, and protocols
    (b) access by content and applications providers
    (c) hardware providers
  4. Cross-subsidies within major Internet firms to segments that are more competitive, distorting competition.
  5. The emergence of regulation to deal with such power.

If the Internet becomes dominated by a few firms, and given its centrality to commerce, culture, and politics, it is not likely to be left alone by regulation. Earlier debates over the opening of cable-provided Internet access are an early example. Others are likely to follow. Hence, the Internet might, in the long term, move from an entrepreneurial and libertarian model to one of market power and of regulation resembling or even exceeding that of other electronic media. These findings and conclusions may not fit the Internet’s self-image of being wide-open and competitive, but business strategies and public policies will benefit from a realistic rather than wishful assessment.”

Clipped from ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog