David LaFontaine's
Sips from the Firehose
A blog that attempts to distill the internet into one easy-to-gulp mental beverage.
Ahhh! Tasty.
The LA Times: Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The eulogies for the newspaper industry are starting to become almost commonplace, as the generation that matured and worked during the Salad Days of the 70s and 80s totters off into the sunset. Mark Heisler, the NBA beat writer at the LA Times, has weighed in with a...
CNN International segment on Murdoch, phone-hacking & tabloid tactics
The point is that the problems with the news business bear surprising resemblance to the problems of society as a whole. We’ve tied our fate to the unfettered free-market economic forces, without really taking notice of the fact that there are a few industries, at least, that are not prepackaged Cheetos. Where diluting quality and streamlining production schedules and all the other tricks of modern corporate management may work in the short term … but in the long term are not only killing the industry, but harming … well, basically Western Civilization.
How Africa Sees the Attacks on Obama
I found this painting in a humble little clothing stall in the merkato in Addis Ababa, during my last day there, when I finally got some free time to wander around and explore this fascinating city a little bit. Amongst all the funky art & tchotchkes, this...
Sweet Mother of FSM, Google+ Is Smart!
Being able to add people to the circles is an absolutely frickin’ brilliant move! The little animations are absolutely killer. I have been wanting this and talking about this and boring the living shit out of my tech-dw33b friends about how the one big problem STILL with social media is that it’s damn near and all-or-nothing game.
No longer. Someone at Google “got it,” and this is a killer feature that Facebook DOES NOT HAVE.
Ethiopia New Media Training
The clash of ancient and modern is never more stark than in these developing nations I've been in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the last week, training the local journalists and government information officers (aka PR flacks) on how best to take advantage of the way that...
Applause lines and final thanks
Here's a short audio file i recorded at the close of the Civic Media conference this week at MIT. I'd like to add my own thanks to the sentiments expressed herein; thus was a fabulous antidote to the general malaise afflicting so many of our traditional media...