| Good news is on the
way.
- Modest
Mouse
The successful publisher
of tomorrow will be the one who creates a community around an
author and readers.
- Bob Stein, Institute
for the Future of the Book, The
future of the book
News is something someone doesn't want printed. All else is
advertising.
- William Randolph Hearst
I can't think of many media companies at all around the world
that have successfully yet grappled with the structural changes
that are going on in the news media business. The business model
that has sustained journalism as we know it and understand it
for the past, well depending on which medium you're looking
at, up to the past 200 years, they're under threat in a way
that they've never been before, and nobody has yet found a solution.
I mean one of the things that occurs to me in this context is
that the big media companies are a little bit like the Queen
Mary, they're very hard to turn around. And so I don't think
there's any coincidence that some of the most transforming new
technologies and the use of them, have actually come from little
backyard operations, and I'm thinking particularly here of Wikipedia
and Youtube and Itunes, all of them, they are having a huge
impact on the broad media world, and none of them originated
in big media companies, they all originated elsewhere. So it's
very difficult when you're in an entrenched position. I mean
what that tends to mean is it breeds kind of fear and uncertainty
and doubt, whereas what is needed is kind of root and branch
change, and fresh thinking, and left field thinking, and so
on., to tackle some of the changes that need to be made.
- Matthew Ricketson, Media
Report (December 2008)
The late E.F.
Schumacher believed that there are two places to find wisdom:
in nature and in religious traditions. To seek wisdom in nature
we should obviously go to those who have loved nature enough
to study it.
- Matthew
Fox, Original
Blessing
As far as NPR.org — sure, I want the traffic to increase,
but to me the ultimate goal is not just bringing people to this
walled garden that is NPR.org.
- Vivian Schiller, Why
NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media
Without context, a piece of information is just a dot. It floats
in your brain with a lot of other dots and doesn't mean a damn
thing. Knowledge is information-in-context -- connecting the
dots.
- Michael Ventura, Letters
at 3AM
Experienced travelers refer to this perception problem as 'The
CNN Effect.' You'll hear nothing about a country on the news
until suddenly something bad happens and it's all the perky
newscasters can talk about. A bomb goes off in Casablanca, so
everyone stops going anywhere in Morocco ... Tourism to Bali
dropped after the tsunami hit in Asia, even though it's over
a thousand miles from the affected area.
- Tim Leffel, Make
your travel dollars worth a fortune
Newspaper critics are being bypassed by web sites where people
are allowed to become critics themselves. And nearly all these
sites are a two-way conversation. Especially in areas like Travel,
the younger generation wants to read information by people like
themselves. So a newspaper has a choice. They can say we are
the experts, or they can say 'this is interesting' ask their
readers to comment.
- Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, quoted in Mike
Butcher's A pincer movement
on the papers
Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted
from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever
is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever
is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an
inadequate or lying language -- this will become not merely
unspoken, but unspeakable.
- Adrienne Rich
Look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another
story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story
about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before.
It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and
the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online
metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from
the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will
not only change the world, but also change the way the world
changes.
- Time
Magazine
How did it come to be that the news is reported solely by journalists?
- Rob Brezsny, Pronoia
I read the news today, oh boy.
- The Beatles
Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible
to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself,
but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be
kept ignorant, he may not be made ignorant.
- Thomas Paine, quoted in From Milton to McLuhan
When did we stop calling it 'the underground press?' When did
the more polite 'alternative' usurp the usage? That's one of
those little landmarks lost to history, even by we who were
making (or dancing to?) that history. I've asked others who
were there, and they can't remember either. Looking back, it
was the turning point. At some unmarked moment we all sort of
forgot that we'd been trying to bring down the American system
and dedicated ourselves to a task both more possible and more
complicated: We engaged in a commercial venture that would make
money and support us while standing for anti-commercial values
-- true children of our generation, we determined to have our
cake and, while critically discussing its contents, eat it too.
- Michael Ventura, Look
Ma, No Hands
At the Beauty and Truth Laboratory, we believe that stories
about the rot are not inherently more captivating than stories
about the splendor ... Obsessing on evil is boring. Rousing
fear is hackneyed shtick. Wallowing in despair is a bad habit.
Indulging in cynicism is akin to committing a copycat crime.
- Rob Brezsny, Pronoia
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