Media Bits & Bytes - Bursting Bubble Edition - September 25,
 2012

 Published by Portside
 September 25, 2012

 # # #

 About 3,000 former Hearst interns join class action lawsuit

 by Andrew Beaujon

 Poynter September 11, 2012

 http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/188078/about-3000-former-hearst-interns-join-class-action-lawsuit/

 Diana Wang served as an unpaid intern for Harper's Bazaar,
 which is owned by Hearst. She filed a lawsuit asking for
 wages and damages for what she contends was really an unpaid
 job, and about 3,000 former Hearst interns have joined in
 what is now a class-action suit. Hearst maintains that the
 lawsuit is "without merit." In a statement to The Cut,
 Hearst vice-resident of corporate communications Paul
 Luthringer said the company's internship programs "are
 soundly within the law and offer young people an up-close
 view of the magazine business."

 # # #

 All the TV News Since 2009, on One Web Site

 By Bill Carter

 The New York Times Business Day - Media & Advertising
 September 17, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/business/media/internet-archive-amasses-all-tv-news-since-2009.html

 Inspired by that pillar of antiquity the Library of
 Alexandria, Brewster Kahle has a grand vision for the
 Internet Archive, the giant aggregator and digitizer of
 data, which he founded and leads.

 "We want to collect all the books, music and video that has
 ever been produced by humans," Mr. Kahle said. As of
 Tuesday, the archive's online collection will include every
 morsel of news produced in the last three years by 20
 different channels, encompassing more than 1,000 news series
 that have generated more than 350,000 separate programs
 devoted to news in both English and Spanish. Searching is
 based on closed captions, and programs can be viewed via
 streaming or borrowed on DVD for research purposes and
 personal use.

 [Full disclosure, I did some work on this project - Nan
 Otek]

 # # #

 New technology helps Oregon inmates stay connected

 By Les Zaitz

 The Oregonian
 September 12, 2012

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2012/09/new_technology_helps_oregon_in.html

 Most Oregon inmates are finding it cheaper to phone home
 these days, as new flat-rate calling is part of a wave of
 new technology rolling out in the state's 14 prisons.
 Starting this week, the state's 14,200 inmates can buy MP3
 players to receive text messages and photos, and to buy and
 store music. Also, for the first time, inmates can be
 contacted from the outside by phone and family and others
 can leave a voice mail of up to three minutes. Another
 system will enable them to "video visit" families who are
 often hundreds of miles away.

 State Corrections officials expect the technology to drive
 down recidivism and cut prison costs that now consume nearly
 a dime of every dollar in the state's general fund budget.
 The system also gives prison officials a new investigative
 tool, as all calls, chats and messages are recorded.

 # # #

 Salon Sells "The Well" to Longtime Members

 By Nick Wingfield

 The New York Times - Blogs
 September 20, 2012


 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/salon-sells-the-well-to-longtime-members/

 One of the earliest online communities, The Well, has a new
 owner: its members. On Thursday evening, Salon Media
 Group, the previous owner of The Well, said it had sold the
 community to the Well Group, a private investment group
 consisting of longtime members of the community, which was
 founded in 1985, long before the rise of the Web.

 Created as the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link by Whole Earth
 Catalog founder Stewart Brand, The Well was never a huge
 community by the standards of today's social media Web
 sites. But it had a highly influential audience of cyber-
 thinkers and entrepreneurs and was a true pioneer of the
 digital age and a forerunner of today's ubiquitous social
 networks.

 # # #

 Village Voice Media's Owners Are Selling All Their Papers

 By Dashiell Bennett

 Atlantic Wire
 September 24, 2012


 http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2012/09/village-voice-medias-owners-are-selling-all-their-papers/57175/

 The owners of Village Voice Media have decided to sell all
 their publications to distance the news from their
 controversial adult services website. Michael Lacey and Jim
 Larkin will transfer their nationwide network of alternative
 papers including The Village Voice; SF Weekly; LA Weekly;
 Denver's Westword; and the Phoenix New Times; to a new
 company and sell control to several of those papers' current
 publishers and editors. The pair will retain ownership of
 Backpage.com, a classified ads website that has been
 extremely lucrative but has faced several lawsuits and
 criminal complaints due to its adult-services advertising.
 The remaining employees will have to wait and see if this
 new direction turns things around financially.

 # # #

 Corruption in Wikiland? Paid PR scandal erupts at Wikipedia

 By Violet Blue

 CNet.com September 18, 2012

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57514677-93/corruption-in-wikiland-paid-pr-scandal-erupts-at-wikipedia/

 A Wikipedia trustee and a Wikipedian In Residence have been
 editing the online encyclopedia on behalf of PR clients. Add
 the discovery of an SEO business run on the side, and this
 tempest is out of its teapot.

 Wikipedians In Residence liaison with galleries, libraries,
 archives and museums to facilitate information between the
 organizations and Wikipedia community editors. They are not
 allowed to operate if there are conflicts of interest and
 are not allowed to edit the pages of the organization they
 liaison with.

 # # #

 On Web, a Fine Line on Free Speech Across the Globe

 By Somini Sengupta

 The New York Times September 16, 2012

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/technology/on-the-web-a- fine-line-on-free-speech-across-globe.html

 For Google last week, the decision was clear. An anti-
 Islamic video that provoked violence worldwide was not hate
 speech under its rules because it did not specifically
 incite violence against Muslims, even if it mocked their
 faith. Although Google says the anti-Islamic video,
 "Innocence of Muslims," was not hate speech, it still
 restricted access to the video in Libya and Egypt because of
 the extraordinarily delicate situation on the ground and out
 of respect for cultural norms. Google is not the only
 Internet company to grapple with questions involving the
 anti-Islamic video, which appeared on YouTube, which Google
 owns. Facebook on Friday confirmed that it had blocked links
 to the video in Pakistan, where it violates the country's
 blasphemy law.

 Every day, Internet companies write their own edicts about
 what kind of expression is allowed, things as diverse as
 pointed political criticism, nudity and notions as murky as
 hate speech. Most vexing are the decisions that involve
 whether a form of expression is hate speech, which has no
 universally accepted definition. Around the world,
 countries, including democratic ones, have widely divergent
 legal approaches to regulating speech they consider to be
 offensive or inflammatory.

 # # #

 Hanoi Web Crackdown Hits Blogs; Foreign Firms Fret

 By James Hookway

 Wall Street Journal
 September 13, 2012

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444433504577649361464660658.html

 Vietnam's leaders are stepping up their campaign against
 critical blogs, ordering government investigators to arrest
 the operators of three websites, at a time when global
 Internet companies are growing more worried about doing
 business in the tightly policed country.

 A government statement issued late Wednesday named three
 blogs that allegedly posted articles accusing the government
 of corruption and human-rights abuses, describing the blogs
 as being part of a "wicked plot of the hostile forces" - a
 term often used to describe advocates of democratic reforms.
 Two of the three sites vowed to continue.

 # # #

 Racist NYPD Facebook Group Prompts 17 Cops To Be Disciplined

 Huffington Post
 August 30, 2012

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/23/nypd-racist-facebook-group-punished-17-employees_n_1824774.html

 The NYPD has disciplined 17 department cops who took part in
 a racist Facebook page titled "No More West Indian Day
 Parade Detail." Last December, lawyers compiled nearly 70
 pages worth of racist and violent comments in which police
 officials called parade-goers a slew of derogatory names
 including "savages" and "animals." One cop wrote,
 according to the report, "... when they all gather drop a
 bomb and wipe them all out."

 The Facebook group caused so much outrage, some local
 lawmakers even proposed new requirements mandating NYPD
 officers to live within the five boroughs in order to
 prevent racist misconduct. The announcement comes nearly a
 full year after the 2011 Parade and just days before the
 2012 Parade. which was scheduled on September 3rd.

 # # #

 It's Official: The Era of the Personal Computer Is Over

 By Arik Hesseldahl

 All Things D.com
 September 15, 2012

http://allthingsd.com/20120915/its-official-the-era-of-the-personal-computer-is-over/

 As a signpost on the road to the so-called Post-PC Era, as
 of this year, personal computers no longer consume the
 majority of the world's memory chip supply. Word of this
 tipping point came during the second quarter of 2012, when
 PC memory chips, also known as DRAM (pronounced "DEE-ram")
 accounted for only 49 percent of DRAM produced around the
 world, down from 50.2 percent in the first quarter of the
 year.

 PCs have consumed the majority of memory chips since the
 1980s, but now they are going into tablets and smartphones.
 For PC-making companies, notably Hewlett-Packard, Dell and
 Lenovo, the shift marks the beginning of an overall decline
 in the importance of PCs.

 # # #

 Facebook's Growing Silent-Majority Problem

 By Kevin Kelleher

 Pandodaily.com
 September 15, 2012

 http://pandodaily.com/2012/09/14/facebooks-growing-silent-majority-problem/

 For all its talk about bringing people together online,
 Facebook has always had two vocal camps: One took to the
 social network enthusiastically, the other took the opposite
 direction, avoiding the site entirely, or canceling their
 accounts.

 All along, there was a third camp - people who were not
 drawn to publish their daily activities but check in as
 needed, maybe daily or weekly, to communicate with their
 friends. This third group - the silent majority of Facebook
 users - hold the key to the company's future. Inactivity
 among Facebook users is becoming a growing problem, because
 although FB's overall user base continues to grow globally,
 people are using the site less. The migration to mobile
 devices accounts for some of that decline, but not all. The
 remainder appears to be that FB is simply not taking over
 all of our on-live lives, as their business model predicted.

 # # #

 ABC News, Univision Soft-Launch Website For New Cable
 Channel

 By Alex Weprin

 MediaBistro.com
 September 19, 2012

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/abc-news-univision-soft-launch-website-for-new-cable-channel_b146409

 Although it doesn't have a name yet, ABC News and Univision
 have quietly launched a website for the upcoming cable news
 channel the two companies are developing. As promised, the
 articles on the site have a focus on issues important to
 Latinos, and are all in English. While it is still early,
 the new site is a first step in getting the network off the
 ground, and gives it an online presence in advance of the
 upcoming Presidential election, which will likely drive
 tremendous traffic to most online news outlets.

 # # #

 Power, Pollution and the Internet

 By James Glanz

 New York Times
 September 22, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/technology/data-centers-waste-vast-amounts-of-energy-belying-industry-image.html

 [This is a long feature article about the huge demand for
 uninterrupted energy required by today's giant server farms
 and the growing environmental impact of their inefficient
 design and operations.]

 There are tens of thousands of data centers around the
 world, all with rows and rows of servers spread over
 hundreds of thousands of square feet and using industrial
 cooling systems, solely to support the overall explosion of
 digital information and the stupendous amounts of data set
 in motion each day.

 A yearlong examination by The New York Times has revealed
 that this aspect of the information industry is sharply at
 odds with its image of sleek efficiency and environmental
 friendliness. Most data centers, by design, consume vast
 amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, and
 online companies typically run their facilities at maximum
 capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result,
 data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity
 they pull off the grid.

 To guard against a power failure, they further rely on banks
 of generators that emit diesel exhaust, and the pollution
 from data centers has increasingly been cited for violating
 clean air regulations. Considered an industry dirty secret,
 on average these centers use only 6 percent to 12 percent of
 the electricity powering their servers to perform
 computations. The rest was essentially used to keep servers
 idling and ready in case of a surge in activity that could
 slow or crash their operations.

 # # #

 Portside [Media Scan] - September 25, 2012 Occasional
 stories, comments and analysis about reports IN the media

 # # #

 Brought to You by...Big Oil? Washington Post hides industry
 sponsorship of energy debate

 FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
 September 14, 2012

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4619

 The Washington Post had a two-page spread in its September
 11 edition devoted to a "debate" on energy policy. "Ahead of
 2012 Vote, Energy Generates a Lively Debate," read the
 headline on page 14. The two-page spread that followed was
 presented as an election-year discussion of U.S. energy
 policy. As Editor Jordan explained, the debate grew out of
 discussions held at both the Republican and Democratic
 conventions. Those forums were sponsored by the Post and the
 Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

 But the Post failed to credit another sponsor:
 Vote4Energy.org, whose logo appears on the Post Live website
 that features the forums. What is Vote4Energy? It's a
 project of the American Petroleum Institute, the main
 lobbying group of the oil and gas industries. And entirely
 missing from this "debate" were environmentalists or any
 strong critics of the fossil fuel industry.

 # # #

 Marikana, murder and journalism

 By Mara Kardas-Nelson

 Pambazuka.org
 September 12, 2012
 
 http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/84051

 On 16 August, television cameras captured the police
 shooting at an advancing group of miners. When the police
 stopped shooting, the cameras showed bodies of the injured
 and dead. Official figures put the number of dead at 34. It
 was widely assumed that all 34 were killed in the incident
 captured on television. But Greg Marinovich published an
 article on the Daily Maverick website which presented
 evidence that miners were executed at a koppie away from the
 scene we saw on television.

 The report stated that "Some of the miners killed in the 16
 August massacre at Marikana appear to have been shot at
 close range or crushed by police vehicles. Yet there is not
 a single report on an injured policeman from the day."

 # # #

 Media Missing The Big Picture On Solar

 by Jill Fitzsimmons

 Media Matters
 September 11, 2012

 http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/09/11/media-missing-the-big-picture-on-solar/189835

 A solar industry group announced this week that the U.S. is
 on track to install as much photovoltaic solar power this
 year as we did in the last decade. But the media's myopic
 focus on Solyndra has overshadowed promising signs that the
 U.S. could be headed towards a clean energy revolution if we
 provide clear, long-term incentives, rather than walking
 away after one company's demise.

 # # #

 Mug-shot websites move beyond journalism to mainstream
 profiteers

 by Tracie Powell

 Poynter.org
 September, 12, 2012


 http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/making-sense-of-news/186127/mug-shot-websites-move-beyond-journalism-to-mainstream-profiteers/

 Former crime reporter Greg Rickabaugh launched The Jail
 Report, one of several weekly newspapers that features crime
 news, analysis and features on most wanted criminals. But
 the staple of the publications are pictures of people who
 have been arrested - publicly available mug-shots.
 Rickabaugh's business is booming, and boasts that he's
 earning more money publishing mug-shots than he ever did as
 a reporter.

 These days, mugshot websites are popping up all over the
 place, started by people with no journalism background and
 no journalism intent. They import public records from
 sheriff's office websites and then charge people hundreds or
 even thousands of dollars to have the content removed.
 Making money by exploiting state public records laws and
 Google's search algorithms to publicly shame people is a
 growth industry.

 # # #

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