Why wait for the event?

In China, spin really does take precedence over actual events. Why wait for the space shot when the public relations types can do it so much better in advance? Just remember not to put it out until the deal actually goes down.

Not dead yet

The second annual edition of the Canadian Internet Project has been released and it appears, based on the research, that we aren't done with newspapers quite yet. It turns out that most of us use the Internet as a supplementary news source, not an exclusive channel, for getting news. We still rely on traditional media like newspapers to find out what is going on. So much for predictions of netizens like Jeff Jarvis, who keep predicting that the death of newspapers is imminent. Not just yet, it says here.

Sarah and Hils?

Best satire yet on the U.S. presidential campaign. Check it out.

She really liked cows

One job of the journalist is to provide background and contextual information that the public can use in making decisions like whom to vote for in an election. Here's an excellent example of such background writing, from the New York Times. The paper had reporters dig into Sarah Palin's record as an elected person in Alaska. Among other things, they discovered that Palin had a habit of naming old school friends to powerful government jobs. One person Palin hired was a high school pal who got to be Alaska's secretary of agriculture, partly because as a kid she really liked cows.

Un-friendly Facebook

All of you who thought Facebook was a great place to meet up with new people got the word this week that that's not what the service is for. Facebook, it turns out, is a "social utility" site, not a place to accumulate lists of people you encounter on the Net and want to correspond with. It might be a little late for the administrators to say this, but, hey, don't say you weren't warned.

TV really is more important that voting

Is television exposure really considered more important actual votes in our democracy?
It could be argued that that is the case, in light of the decision Wednesday by the leaders of the Conservative and New Democratic parties to reverse themselves and allow a party with no seats in the House of Commons to take part in the televised leaders' debates during the Oct. 14 election campaign . Stephen Harper and Jack Layton had opposed letting Elizabeth May participate, partly on the grounds that May's party, the Greens, hadn't elected anyone to the Commons in past elections. But a coast-to-coast public outcry over this stand apparently prompted the pair to change their minds. The controversy and the reversal seems to suggest that Canadians put more value on seeing their leaders on TV than on the ability of those leaders to actual win votes. That's an interesting proposition. It may signal that Canadians are increasingly prepared to forego the actual practice of Parliamentary democracy, in favour of something closer to a Canadian Idol style referendum on who should lead us. What do you think?

The message is the medium

Greetings, and welcome to my news and media blog.
I will be posting all sorts of stuff here related to the way we use the media to convey, explain, spin and even create the news. You are most welcome to sample what is served here, and chew it over. Please join the discussion if you have a thought on whatever comes up.

Jim Cunningham