Appvertising

Are you getting ads on your smart phone? Are they increasing? Where do they come from?

This NPR story discusses the aggressive world of mobile advertising.

This is the last MediaNote of Summer 2012.

Questions...

•What types of advertising do you find the most objectionable?

•Which of the practices in this story do you find the most objectionable?

•Does it matter if advertisers can track you through your phone's GPS?

•Is this an area where government regulation is necessary--or is it unnecessary?

Resistance is Futile

Advertising is big business. And it is far more sophisticated than most consumers realize. But up to now it has largely been an art. That may be about to change.

Reuters News reports on an experiment of brain waves at City College of New York. The experiment measures video stimulus to which brains powerfully respond. The result, say researchers, could be future advertising that affects you on a profound level.

Questions...

•Is advertising ever unfair? If so, when?

•What are some examples of particularly powerful ads? Why are they powerful?

•Are you sure that your product preferences are really yours? Or are they a product of effective advertising?

•What are some of the negative side effects of advertising? What are some positive side effects?

Future News: ? Reporting from ?

The City Council passes the local budget. High School A defeats High School B 20-17. A local dentist is badly injured in a car crash.

All of these are typical local newspaper stories, reported on by a small army of usually young, nearly always badly paid reporters. But that may be about to change, and perhaps not in a good way.

Journatic is a company that outsources local news to reporters who cover stories from thousands of miles away. Sometimes, the basic facts of a news story are even assembled overseas. Is this the death of local journalism, or a rebirth? NPR reports.

Questions...

•Does it matter if local stories are written by overseas reporters? Why or why not?

•What type of reporting could a local reporter do better?

•What should a reporter know about Glendale before reporting on it?

What other information jobs could be outsourced?

The End of Cash?

We no longer have paper resumes or paper report cards, so is it any surprise that we may be nearing the end of paper money? Maybe cash is just a hard-copy version of money that only older, technophobic people will cling to.

This NPR story holds out the promise that digital wallets are right around the corner and that cash may become so 20th Century.

Questions...

•The Digital Wallet is an example of what from Chapter 1?

•What is good about Digital Wallets? What is bad about it?

•Who will benefit from Digital Wallets, and how?

Hey, Not So Fast!

One of the early television news organizations had the slogan, "Get It First, and Get It Right." But what if your news organization can only get one out of two right? Which is more important?

For both CNN and Fox, the choice was to get the news about the Supreme Court decision over the Affordable Care Act out first. Unfortunately, they did not get the story right. NPR reports.

Questions...

•Why do you think CNN and Fox got this big story wrong?

•Did the SCOTUS blog help get the story wrong, or right?

•How is capitalistic competition between media outlets good? How is it bad?

•How does the need for profit affect judgment about what is "news"?