Summer 06: Thanks for Being a Great Class

The summer class has been a lot of fun to teach. This class had a lot of energetic, enthusiastic students who really thought about the material. I truly enjoyed the wide-ranging classroom discussions we had. And turnout on the field trips was terrific.

I'll be taking your final exams home with me this weekend, and I should have course grades ready to turn in my early next week. Shortly after that, grades will be posted by the college.

Good luck in your future endeavors.

Newspapers: Shrinking Pages and Smaller Staffs

SI leader Mike Arvizu gazes over the Big Papa Pizza that is about to be served to the students who showed up for the final exam SI study session on July 20.

Today's medianote comes from a National Public Radio story about cost-cutting at the New York Times. The story provided a good jumping-off point for a discussion about the shrinking and aging of newspaper readership and what can be done to reverse it.

While it was clear that few of my students were avid newspaper readers, it was also apparent that many of them wanted to be informed about important domestic and international issues and were appreciative of serious journalism. The key seems to be reformatting these serious news sources around the technology that plays a huge part in their lives: the computer, the Internet, and the cellphone.

UC Santa Cruz: They've Got Game

I think UC Santa Cruz has a cool campus and an even cooler mascot. Fiat Slug.

Today's medianote comes from an article in the San Jose Mercury News. UC Santa Cruz--a beautiful hillside campus overlooking the Pacific where the school mascot is the banana slug--is starting an undergraduate major in computer game design, the first such major in the University of California system.

I think well thought out and amply-supported computer game development programs--USC's impressive Interactive Media Division offers bachelors and masters degrees--make a lot of sense. There are always more film school graduates than good jobs available for them. Same thing for journalism school graduates and good jobs in journalism. But gaming is still a young field where there are terrific opportunities. The educational pipeline is only beginning to supply the field with a regular infusion of young talent. And if your university is located in Silicon Valley's favorite beach town, well, it's a no-brainer, dude.

A Funny Way to Draw Advertising on MySpace

MySpace, the insanely-popular social networking site (about half my students said they had sites and more than half admitted to at least visiting MySpace), is improving its comedy section with material from professional comedians. This is being done in an attempt to make the site a more attractive place for mainstream advertisers to peddle their wares.

Oddly, the problem isn't drawing a large audience. MySpace is drawing over 50 million web surfers a month. Nor is the problem drawing a favored audience demographic. MySpace excels in attracting the teenagers and young adults that many advertisers covet.

Actually, the problem is providing a digital page free of material that is too edgy, too tasteless, or just too out there for Corporate America. MySpace Comedy is likely to contain material that is on the edge, but at least it won't be over the edge. Or at least that's the hope.

This reminds me of something I read a few years back when there were a lot of super-trashy daytime talk shows on TV. The article said that some of the particularly low-rent talk shows began to die off not so much because their audiences dwindled or because they were being harrassed by the FCC. No, the problem was that advertisers were bailing because the shows were getting into topics that the advertisers just didn't want to be associated with. I remember that one of the shows had been deemed too classless by a company advertising bug spray.

A Legal Challenge for Craigslist

Craigslist has become a runaway Internet success. About half of my students said that they have bought, sold or rented something through this online classified ad site.

Craigslist has found itself on the defensive in a case that may further define how responsible unedited online sites are for messages placed on them that are illegal. The issue at hand is whether Craigslist must edit or reject housing ads with discriminatory content that are in violation of the Fair Housing Act. A newspaper would be compelled to reject the discriminatory ads or alter them. Internet sites have largely been able to avoid this level of control (and responsibility) because they are unedited.

Other large Internet companies are closely following this case, fearing that a setback for Craigslist could make Amazon responsible for the content in user-written book reviews or Yahoo! responsible for messages posted in its user newsgroups.

One MC101 opined that this sort of regulation would be ineffective because it would be largely impossible. "Regulating cyberspace," she said, "would be like trying to regulate outer space."

Bon Bon: Movies for the Very Small Screen

The Third Screen Film Festival sounds like a lot of fun. It also sounds like an important milestone in the world of digital mass communications. Add those two things together and it's today's Club Medianote Bon Bon.

Third Screen is described in a July 8 article in the Los Angeles Times as "a sort of Sundance for the cellphone set." Original clips of eight minutes or less that were made for cellphone viewing are eligible.

The "Third Screen" designation comes from the idea that most of us now get mass media entertainment and information from two screens, television and the computer. But there is a third screen, the cellphone screen, that some believe will ultimately become a mass medium onto itself.

Submissions will be accepted until July 19. Around 3,000 submissions are expected.

TV: A New Way of Counting Eyeballs

Tivo and the Internet, among other things, have prompted a historic change in how television audiences will be counted by Nielsen Media Research. Beginning in November, Nielsen will make public the number of viewers who watch the commercials for any given program. This will lead toward a television environment where advertisers will pay for the number of people who actually sit through their ads, a number likely to be quite different than the number watching the surrounding TV show. Tivo, along with other digital recording decording devices, are also implicated in this because they make it easier for viewers to avoid the ads.

I took this medianote from a July 12 article in the Los Angeles Times entitled "Nielsen Will Post Data on Ad Viewing." I also listened to a National Public Radio story on this topic.

Taking the Film Out of Movies

This MC101 is getting a time-out, Old West style, at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage.
Q: Why was the MC101 student behind bars at the Autry Museum?
A: Because he wanted to use his cell phone.

One by one, it seems, the physical aspect of mass media is falling by the wayside. Newspapers are not always read off of paper any more. Music often isn't on records, tapes, or CDs. And now, maybe you will be going off to the movies and will not see anything on film.

According to an article in the Business Section of the Los Angeles Times on July 8, three of the nation's largest movie theater chains have approached investment banker JPMorgan about raising $1 billion for the large-scale conversion of film theaters to digital theaters. The studios have long been in favor of this changeover, but the exhibitors have found the cost too great to bear by themselves. The plan discussed in the Times article envisions the debt being paid off over a number of years through savings in the fees that theaters pay to the studios.

***GOOD TIME AT THE AUTRY We had an excellent turnout yesterday afternoon at the Autry National Center. This was the seventh and final field trip in the class. And I must say, this has been a very fun, enthusiastic and bright group of students.

Movie Sanitizers Lose in Court

Today's medianote was about CleanFlicks and other companies that alter major motion pictures to take out profanity, nudity, swearing and other stuff. My sources for this medianote were an article in the Los Angeles Times Business Section on July 10 entitled "Sanitizers of Home Video Lose in Court" and a National Public Radio story about the same topic that aired on July 11.

This medianote led to a lively classroom discussion in which students generally sided with the moviemakers' point of view. The prevailing feeling was that motion pictures are a combination of art and capitalism and that it should be illegal to alter that unique product for resale without permission.

TV: Phoning It In

On Saturday, 20 MC101s and guests went on a walking tour of L.A.'s Broadway Theater District. These students are in front of the former Arcade Theater, which is largely intact but is being used as an electronics store.

Today's medianote comes from a recent Yahoo! News article about the coming of cellphone TV. It's already in Japan, and it will probably be in the U.S. fairly soon.

The MC101s felt this is destined to be a popular new gadget. Generally, they said they were willing to put up with the small screen in exchange for being able to watch TV wherever they happened to be. We had an interesting discussion in which students came up with schemes for paying for the programming. One student suggested that cellphone TV viewers could pay part of their monthly bill by referring advertisers to friends through instant messages. This prompted a student in the back of the room to exclaim, "Hey! That could get really annoying!" Welcome to the world of advertising.

***DUPLICATE AUDIO WARNING Audioblogger, which sometimes does not post my recordings, today is posting unwanted multiple copies. I've deleted every extra audio post that I've run across so far, but more could wind up on this blog after I have logged off. Stay tuned.

Bon Bon: How Not to Use Wikipedia

Today is the midterm in Mass Comm 101, so no medianote. Instead, you get a bon bon.

With the research papers due next Friday, I thought I would talk briefly about citing Wikipedia as a scholarly sourse in college-level research papers.

Don't do it.

Personally, I like Wikipedia and I occasionally use it. But I wouldn't use it for anything more than background information in a college paper, and I certainly wouldn't quote it or use it as a cited source.

Even Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, agrees that Wikipedia really doesn't have a place in scholarly research.

So there.

Spike: TV Gone Boy Crazy

We had a nice field trip yesterday at the Getty Center. Here are some of our early arrivals, shortly before they got their orientation for the field trip assignment.

Spike TV and its quest to track down the elusive 18-34 year old male television viewer was the subject of today's medianote. In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times (June 25), Staff Writer Matea Gold pointed out that Xboxes, iPods and other new media devices have cut into the television viewing time of young adult males, who happen to be a demographic group prized by many advertisers.

Spike TV, rallying behind the slogan "Get More Action," is building its schedule around such shows as "The Ultimate Fighter" and "Blade" (based upon a comic book character of the same name). Other Spike shows include (or will soon include) "The Kill Pit" and "Afro Samurai."

YouTube Turns the Audience into Producers

MC101s were in high spirits on Monday evening as we attended a Fireworks Concert at the Hollywood Bowl. This pic was taken in the Bowl Museum, where the students found some of the answers to their field trip assignment.

According to a recent National Public Radio story, YouTube.Com has become yet another online success story, seemingly overnight. YouTube users post videos of varying quality and then tell their friends where to find the videos. And some of those friends post their own videos, perhaps as a response. The making, showing, recommending, and commenting on these videos is a prime example of social computing.

Although most of these videos are seen by only a few people, some of them are watched by a shockingly large numbers. There is a strong viral aspect to the very successful YouTube videos: someone "discovers" a video, emails 10 friends about it, who collectively email 75 friends about it, who email 600 friends, and so on. Some YouTube videos have over a million viewings.

Snakes on This Blog

Here is the movie poster for Snakes on a Plane. Wonder if the audience had creative input into the poster too?

Snakes on a Plane is the sort of B-grade movie thriller that could easily disappear without a trace at the box office. But this film gets close to its Aug. 18 release date, it is backed with considerable hype and a dedicated fan base. Credit (or blame) the Internet. Websites started posting details about the film last year and and Director David R. Ellis solicited public comment about what would make the film better.

And according to a recent Column One article in the Los Angeles Times, the online public has certainly responded. There is an entry for Snakes on a Plane in Wikipedia. The Snakes on a Blog website has drawn more than a half-million visitors. And movie fan web sites like blackfilm.com are abuzz with, well, buzz.