Be The Media

Blogging and business moving mainstream

Spencer Swartz writes for Reuters:

"For a few years now, blogs have given tech-savvy individuals a platform to publish directly to the Internet their personal opinions on everything from relationships to politics. Thousands of blogs, characterized by some as the height of self-importance, are posted daily.

But blogs, short for Web logs, are fast gaining corporate recognition and soon may be acknowledged simply as important.

In a sign blogs are moving mainstream, major technology companies, including Microsoft Corp.(Nasdaq:MSFT - news) and International Business Machines Corp.(NYSE:IBM - news), came together at a recent conference to discuss the profit potential of the Web publishing format.

The growth in the number of blogs, and those who read them, continues to attract attention from business leaders, including Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates (news - web sites), as a means of enhancing companies' communication more directly with employees, partners and customers.

Venture capitalists, start-ups, and technology titans gathered at the University of California Berkeley's Haas Business School to consider the commercial use of blogs and issues, such as privacy concerns, that surround blogging.

The event builds on comments Gates made at Microsoft's annual CEO Summit in May touting blogging as a new business tool, and features added by Google Inc., the No. 1 Web search company, to its Blogger.com service to allow users to publish content from e-mail-enabled devices such as cell phones.

IBM sees blogs as a way to revolutionize employee communication, one executive said on the sidelines at the July 23 conference, which attracted about 300 attendees."

Be The Media "local hero"

He welcomed Bill Clinton to the VIP pre-event in Cambridge. Here he is on the set of Democracy Now! during the Democratic National Convention. He serves on the Board of the award-winning Cambridge Community TV (CCTV) and Webhood, a non-profit designed to break down the digital divide for "at-risk" youth in the Cambridge area. He covered the story when the Tribune cut Democracy Now's satellite uplink. The man is everywhere - including the Vineyard, where he is taking a well-deserved vacation right now. Props to local hero Steve Sillari for "being the media." Enjoy your break.

Thanks to CCTV and Democracy Now!

Thanks to the award-winning CCTV and Democracy Now! for the fantastic coverage of the DNC.

Here are a few shots from behind the scenes.

Fox watchdog blog motto: "We watch FOX so you dont have to"

Paul Liberatore writes in the Marin Independent Journal:

"I LEARNED THIS WEEK that Christina Bradley, a 57-year-old Marin County piano teacher, was one of the eight women who monitored Fox News for Robert Greenwald's new documentary, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism."

Bradley and her cohorts watched Fox News 18 hours a day for four months, compiling evidence of the cable station's conservative bias.

"Prior to this, none of us watched Fox at all," she told me. "We range in age from 45 to 63 and are scattered across the United States - California, Colorado, Maine, Missouri, Michigan, New Mexico, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. After the first three weeks of continuous Fox watching, we all began to have melt downs. We would joke about how we needed purification rituals to exorcise the Murdoch demons."

But once their work on the documentary was finished, Bradley and the others were, as she puts it, "at loose ends. What started out as a short-term commitment became a kind of obsession."

These ad hoc media watchdogs had become news hounds, which just so happens to be the name of their new Web site. "We have a great blog motto: 'We watch Fox so you don't have to,'" she said."

Exclusive: Democracy Now!'s Satellite Uplink Pulled by Tribune at DNC

A source at CCTV in Cambridge, Massachussetts explains how Tribune pulled Democracy Now's satellite uplink right before the Democratic National Convention:

"Typically Democracy Now! is broadcast from their studios in Manhattan. When traveling, as is the case with her current book tour, Amy Goodman uses the facilities of local community broadcasters to air her program. CCTV (multiple award-winning Cambridge Community Television) was chosen as Democracy Now!'s production studio for their unconventional converage of the Democratic National Convention. CCTV was working with WB's channel 56's Studio 25 satellite service to broadcast 3 hours per day - 2 DN shows and 1 hour of local member and staff oringinal programming - to 22 million households worldwide. This is up from our normal reach of 22,000 households within Cambridge. One half hour before Democracy Now's live broadcast on Monday morning at 6:30am, Tribune Media pulled our satellite uplink. After Tribune pulled our transponder, they informed Studio 25's truck not to worry about our uplink and to relocate to another client. After lots of pushback from the sat truck and their offices, Democracy Now!'s technical crew led by Dennis Moynihan worked frantically to find another transponder by talking to mulitiple people as far away as Denver. Luckily, with minutes to spare another transponder was located for the live uplink. Meanwhile Amy Goodman was keeping her first guest, Jessse Jackson, comfortable in the studio while considering the reality that the first show of Democracy Now! live from CCTV for the DNC convention would not go on the air."

Feds OK Sony-BMG merger

Julie Keller writes for E! Online:

"And then there were four.

The Federal Trade Commission has just cleared the way for the merger of Sony and BMG's resepective record music divisions, shrinking the field of the world's major record companies by one.

The FTC approval, which comes on the heels of a similar ruling last week in Europe, means that regulators believe the new company, henceforth known as Sony-BMG, does not violate antitrust laws and that the merger can move on full-steam ahead."

Bob Edwards of NPR will host morning show on XM Satellite Radio

From Jennifer Frey at the Washington Post:

"Radio host Bob Edwards, who drew millions of listeners to National Public Radio for three decades but was demoted earlier this year, is taking his signature voice to a competing radio universe, according to Edwards and executives of Washington-based XM Satellite Radio.

Starting Oct. 4, Edwards will host his own morning show on a new channel being launched by XM, as the growing subscription radio service makes its move into public-radio programming.

Edwards, who was unceremoniously dumped as anchor of NPR's "Morning Edition" in March, prompting widespread public protests, will bring the blend of news, talk and interviews he was famous for at NPR to the new "Bob Edwards Show," airing 8 to 9 a.m. daily -- opposite "Morning Edition." The show will repeat immediately afterward.

"They want to give me a program, so I can continue to host and be heard every day instead of occasionally, as I would have been at NPR," Edwards said Tuesday while driving around Maine as part of a three-month book tour and public radio fund-raising effort that ends this weekend. "It's also new. It's like being at NPR when I joined NPR in 1974. It was less than 3 years old -- as old as XM is now. I get to be a pioneer again. How often does someone get that opportunity twice?"

Edwards, 57, had agreed to remain at NPR as a correspondent -- he was expected to return to work shortly -- but had hinted recently that he might be moving on. What NPR didn't know, however, was that Edwards had been won over by the largest satellite radio network in the country. After developing its own music programming in its first three years, XM is pursuing its ambition to distribute public-radio programming and its own original shows in the public radio vein.

With that in mind, XM President and CEO Hugh Panero, who has been developing the new channel, wooed Edwards in hopes his presence would expand XM's subscriber base.

By the end of his 25 years as anchor, Edwards drew 13 million early- morning listeners to NPR's "Morning Edition" every week.

XM, which offers more than 100 channels, currently has 2.1 million subscribers, who pay $9.99 per month for the nationwide service. An XM receiver that can be switched from home to car to boom box costs $99."

Self-Published book: "Shock and Awe"

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer David R Baker reports:

"Sheryl Elam Tappan has broken a cardinal rule of the private contractors who work for the federal government:

Don't criticize your client.

The consultant and former Bechtel Corp. employee has published a book that accuses the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of handing Halliburton extra oil- field repair work in Iraq through what she calls a sham competition slanted against other companies.

Tappan writes from experience. A contract bidding specialist, she was part of the Bechtel team that pursued the same work.

Tappan argues that the corps' actions violated federal contracting law. Her anger about it runs throughout her book, "Shock and Awe in Fort Worth."

"It may be simpleminded, but if you're going to make contractors abide by the law, then the government ought to do the same," Tappan said, in an interview at her San Mateo home.

Her book, self-published in April for about $2,000, has stunned people in the world of government contracting, who aren't used to one of their own biting the federal hand. Her name inspires profound nervousness in some former colleagues, who don't want to talk about her. Bechtel will say little about the book, except noting that the company didn't ask her to write it."

What do the kids have to say?

A small team of Youth Channel producers have just returned from a four day adventure to the DNC in Boston. this short video is a voxpop/trailer for an upcoming short documentary. The YC team shot video at the PolitcalRap Youth forum, the Hip Hop Summit at Roxbury CC, the C-Span press box at the Convention, the PATRIOT Act protest, interviewed a Georgia delegate, and collected lots of street interviews all over Boston.

Democracy Now! and CCTV present Michael Moore at Take Back America

Democracy Now! presents Michael Moore's speech in Cambridge:

Thanks to CCTV - Cambridge Community Television, which was named number one in the Country by the National Alliance for Community Media for the third year in a row - and the fifth time in its history.

Mike rips into the "unstated villain in the film - our national media" and the politics of HATE-riotism.

Amy Goodman:

Everywhere Moore has gone in Boston, massive crowds have followed him. In fact the Kerry campaign is probably quite happy that the filmmaker is leaving town today. Moore is actually heading into George W. Bush's backyard in Crawford Texas, where he will introduce a showing of his film Fahrenheit 9/11 at a football stadium. Moore says he has invited the film's star, President Bush, to attend the show. While Fahrenheit 9/11 has now topped the $100 million mark, no theater in Crawford or the surrounding towns would show the movie, until last week when it was picked up by a theater in Waco. That's why Moore decided to do his own screening near Bush's Crawford ranch.

Michael Moore:

It outs them as being for the Bush administration. It outs them as people who were cheerleaders for this war. It outs them as, to be kind to those who are actually good journalists, journalists who fell asleep on the job. Journalists who didn't ask the hard questions. The one thing I hear when people come out of the theater over and over again is I never saw that on the news. Right? Isn't that--[cheers]--I never--[cheers] why didn't I see that? I never saw those Black congressmen being shut down one after another. Did anyone see that? [cheers]

I didn't know there was a riot at the inauguration parade. I never saw the egg hit the limo. I never saw that! I don't hear from the amputees who sit in our hospitals, 5,000 or 6,000 of them. How come I don't hear from them on the nightly news? (applause) I don't hear from the mothers. I don't see them on the evening news, the mothers of children who have been killed in Iraq and who state their opposition to this war. I haven't seen them on the news. Why haven't I seen this? I live in a free and open country that has a free and open press where you can show us anything. That's the great thing about America. You can show us anything! You can ask any question you want to ask. And this is my humble plea to those of you from the press here.

And don't any of you take this personally. I don't mean it this way, but I--we, the people, we need you. (applause) We need you to do your jobs! We need you! To ask the questions, demand the evidence! Demand the evidence! Don't ever send us to war without asking the questions! (applause) you do us no service by hopping on a band wagon, by becoming cheerleaders, by looking the other way, because you know that's the safest way to play it if you want to keep your job. Or, or, you are just afraid of being accused of being un-American if you were to ask a hard question to the President or his administration. That's not un-American. That's pro-American! To ask the questions. That's--that's patriotic! (applause)

A media, for instance, NBC, owned by General Electric. You know, I understand, I understand General Electric now has over $600 million worth of contracts in Iraq. They are war-profiteers. It doesn't surprise me that their news arm has failed to do the job that it needs to do to tell the truth to the American people about this war. There's nothing surprising about that. I understand that. (applause) I understand the Matt Lauers and the Lisa Myers and the people that have to work for this entity. You have cameras and microphones and the ability to get into places of power that the people in this room can't get in. To ask these questions. And the great thing about this country is you can ask any question you want. You can ask any question you want and not be arrested. Right? (applause) You would not be sent to prison if you ask a question. So what has prevented you from asking the question? But you've got the little lapel flag pin. Right? And the TV. Screen filled up with American flags flying. See, we are patriotic. We are patriotic. But you've thrown down with the wrong people. You haven't just been embedded. You've been in bed with the wrong people. You've listened to those in power and just report their lies as truths. (applause) The Bush administration and the people who support him, they represent the mean or the in this country. The majority of our fellow Americans are liberal and progressive when it comes to the issues. That's not just me saying this or wishing it to be true. Every poll shows that the majority of Americans believe in women's rights. The majority of Americans want stronger environmental laws. The majority of Americans want government laws much the majority of Americans are pro-labor. Put down the whole list of issues, Americans, whether they use the label or not, and most Americans don't like labels, but most Americans in their hearts are liberals and progressives. It's just a small minority of people who hate. They hate. They exist in the politics of hate. They don't believe two consenting adults should have the right to be in love and share their lives together and be legally protected by the state for doing so. What would motivate that? What would motivate--(applause)--what business is it, anyway of these people? These, they aren't patriots. They are HATE-triots and they believe in the politics of HATE-riotism. That's where they stand and patriotism is where real Americans stand. And that's the truth. And that needs to be reported.