Daniel Lubetzky

News gathering and the media world did not change much for decades – till the internet started transforming them. 

One of the disadvantages of the old media model is that to get greater revenues through greater circulation, media has favored conflict – blood, controversy, negative news in short.  Positive news, even if truly newsworthy are under-reported.  Stories are less and less deep, and more and more biased – designed to affirm beliefs rather than to inform.

But new forms of journalism and data-gathering promise to re-arrange incentives and market dynamics, and some really cool and creative new models are popping up with a lot of promise to empower ordinary citizens.

Spot.Us is an experimental-phase platform for community-based journalism.  People can suggest stories they want covered, and donate funds to enable an investigative journalist to research the story.  Others in the community who like a proposed pitch can get behind it to fund it – which is referred to as crowd-funding.

Pro Publica, another innovative platform, aims to build an independent roster of investigative journalists who will sell their stories to media organs across the world.

Indeed, in an age where data can be easily aggregated, it is not efficient or natural to have hundreds of redundant journalists reporting on the same story for their respective local communities.  It makes more sense to aggregate their efforts.  That, of course, is part of the premise of agencies like the Associated Press and Reuters, which should at least theoretically gain in prominence as more local news teams get thinned out.

It also explains why it is likely that when the dust settles there will only be a few giant national or international media entities dominating the news (New York Times, USA Today, Wall St Journal, CNN/Time, Sky, Al Jazeerah) – each distinguished by their angle and intended partisan audience.

But with the internet you can create a citizen-driven platform where investigative journalists are accountable directly to the people and their interests – no political, national, ethnic or partisan angles.

Will their interests be enlightened?

Judging from the blogosphere, not always.  But while the internet may also offer much more static and narrow biased coverage, it should also increase variety and provide opportunities for greater depth and nuance – for those who look for it.

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A new social psychology study asserts watching meanness and aggression on TV rubs off on viewers. If true, we are in for something.

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If you do nothing else today, make sure you view this – The Story of A Sign – La Historia De Un Letrero – it is well worth it.

http://en.zappinternet.com/video/nilSqaMboM/HISTORIA-DE-UN-LETRERO

(and it happens to be shot in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico, a town my Mom is from)

Suzanne Vita Palazzo of Grocery Headquarters wrote an article surveying some of the leading food companies with a social mission and mentioned KIND and PeaceWorks as a pioneer "revolutionizing the business model for an ethical brand."

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The hypocrisy of partisan pundits – Karl Rove, Bill O’Reilly, Nancy Pfotenhauer, appropriately-named DICK Morris and even Sarah Palin – was hilariously exposed by the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart in what is sure to become a classic:

Nothing like Jon Stewart’s reporting to shatter one’s fantasies of political la-la-land.  These segments highlight my foolishness in writing the earlier posts, and expose much of the hypocrisy of exclusionary politicians and regressive policies at this last week’s RNC convention – plus they are damn funny!

On the Stark Differences between McCain and Bush:
(make sure to watch between minute 4:20 and 6:10)

On McCain’s Transformation:

On Small Town Values:

Sarah Palin and Friends:

On Bristol’s Choice:

Before you watch this, make SURE you watch the earlier post about Matt (here).

What do you do when your formerly fun and irreverent brand has been threatened by months of media criticism over alleged corporate missteps? Regardless of where you stand on whether Microsoft tried to manipulate Yahoo or Jerry Yang missed an opportunity to drive shareholder value (or far harsher assessments including this one from Joe Nocera – and the counter-reply from the "fake Steve Jobs"), if you are part of Yahoo’s management – you need to get your team’s spirit back up, and you need to re-focus the world on the deep base of greatness and funk you’ve established over the years.

In a quirky way, this is exactly what this video, which is getting a lot of play and coverage, such as here, is achieving.

Whoever came up with this move at Yahoo deserves a lot of praise.

Thanks to Stacy Perman for a profile about PeaceWorks, KIND, and OneVoice in BusinessWeek yesterday.

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