Internet, News & Media Stories from Around the Web

by: Phillip Martin

Tue Aug 25, 2009 at 09:11 AM CDT

The following are some stores I've had queued up that I thought were worth sharing, mostly regarding the discussion of news online. Nothing outright political here -- just some stuff to share to start the day.

• Stanford researchers tell you that you suck at multi-tasking online, and you should stop now if you want to keep your job.
  
  
• The resurgence of the crazy right-wing has helped one person: Bill O'Reilly's show beat all other shows in its time slot combined last week.
  
  
• Newspaper Industry Ad Revenues at 1965 Levels.
  
  
• The Facebook movie got a green light for production. Kevin Spacey to produce, Aaron Sorkin to write, Fight Club's David Fincher to direct.
  
  
• This is instructuve: Austin American-Statesman Internet Managing Editor Zach Ryall, on the way the Statesman approaches editorial decisions for what kind of content should be feature online:
  

  Web sites also have the ability and I would argue, mission, to deliver credible hard news while soliciting your Chihuahua photos without being schizophrenic. We can carefully serve up some shallow, but very entertaining material while simultaneously holding state government accountable.

  I know that whenever I want shallow material and Chihuahua photos, the first place I go is the front page of Statesman.com.
  
  The shame is that Virtual Capitol and First Reading are both excellent sources for news content on the web. Both go more in-depth into stories than what happens on print, and both would be valuable to feature more on the front page -- in the interest of the Statesman embracing the "shared education" mission of newspapers. Instead, they are buried as niche products -- often given less prominence than Kirk Bohls' columns -- and therefore recruit not much more than the traditional political junkies.
  
  
• This is terrfic news to read...:
  

  The "Citizen Kane"-esque information baron of our collective imagination is done for. That monopoly-based racket is over.
  

  ...even if the close of the article is a little unnerving:
  

  The content king of the past had pretensions to controlling us -- or at least the body politic, the public conversation, the local and national agenda -- by controlling information. But the content king of the future has it much easier; he controls us more directly. Because, loyal subjects that we are, we surrender our information to the king willingly.

• Howard Kutz at the Washington Post writes a depressingly good piece on how "impotent" -- his word, not mine -- the traditional news media is when it comes to debunking some of the right's crazy lies.
  
  
• The SEC is trying to ban fans from uploading video/photo content of its football games in real time. Because, you know, only the University regents are supposed to profit off of the exploitation of 19-year olds. (I'm so ready to beat Florida, it's not even funny.)