Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
We’re Moving to silradio.com
In an effort to reduce clutter, I am combining Radio Boutros with my other blog, SiL. I contemplated putting in a redirect, but I’ll let this blog stay as is for now. That may change soon, but either way please update your feed reader.
See you on SiL.
Jenova Chen: The videogame as art
Jenova Chen, 27, is a video game design upstart. His goal seems modest– to add “vegetables” to the unadventurous menu of video game diet. But, like everything else, the development of interactive media into a valid form of expression is at a crossroads thanks to digital distribution. The same trends that are changing the game (pun intended) of the game industry are also the same forces changing music, film and journalism forever. Here is Jenova from a recent episode of Studio 360. Or you can download the episode here
Lawrence K. Grossman
Lawrence K. Grossman lived in the worlds of both commercial and public television at the highest levels. As a former president of PBS and former head of NBC news, Grossman’s interview is a perfect class transition from commercial broadcast to topics in public broadcasting. While you would think a promotions and advertising exec might be a little more… animated, we can cut Grossman a little slack–the interviewer isn’t exactly Hugh Jackman either. Never the less, this video is informative and interesting. If you don’t think it is interesting, then imagine ME talking about this for 50 minutes.
This is from a series called Conversations With History, which is produced at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
Here is a link to the transcript.
Read Down The Tube. Now!
Between academic and practitioner, producer and executive , thinker and doer, teacher and theoretician there too often exists a Chinese Wall. So how rare it is when you find an individual like George Dessart. Dessart, Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College and former VP at CBS is all of the above. You can read his official bio here, but my recollection of him is more personal. Not TOO long ago, he was my professor. Without giving offense to my other teachers, he is one of only two whose lessons I often seem to remember even if I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast (the other is the historian Paul Avrich).
So when preparing for this past class on global media and the history of the BBC, it is no surprise that professor Dessart was very close to the front of my mind. So why should you care? To paraphrase Arthur Jenson from Network, because you study television, dummy (none of you are dummies, but the quote doesn’t work without it). In his book Down the Tube: An Inside Account of the Failure of American Television, co-written with William Baker, Dessart and Baker try to make sense of why American television is in decline. Baker and Dessart, both TV executives at the highest levels, take our text-book orthodoxy and explain it in thoughtful, real-world terms. For Dessart and Baker, the cycle of regulation and deregulation has had a destructive effect on American media and the example of the BBC is used as a comparative counterpoint.
Much has changed in the broadcast world since the book was published in 1999, but many of the dynamics are still in play. If you have any inclinations to work in the media industry, have an intellectual interest in television or just want to be an educated consumer of your favorite show, read Down The Tube. Now.
Sounding Off
So I haven’t been around much lately. This blog was originally created to communicate with my journalism students. I no longer teach J classes, but I’ve been busy teaching radio production at Brooklyn College, shooting Zombie Hunters, producing a sci-fi noir audio thriller AND I just got hired to be a foley artist for an upcoming theatrical performance (details to come).
So since I’ve been working so much with sound lately, here’s Craig Ferguson with a couple of the foley artists demonstrating their craft. It’s amazing to me that the art of telling stories through sound is still essentially the same since the Golden Age of Radio.
CUNY SUSTAINABLE SHORTS VIDEO CONTEST
Open February 1, 2009 to March 28, 2009
CUNY Sustainable Shorts is a video contest with a $500 cash prize sponsored by Sustainable CUNY with the theme ‘Going Green’. All CUNY students, staff, teachers and alumni are invited to submit a video entry that is no more than 2 minutes in length to the Sustainable CUNY Shorts You Tube Group. Submissions can be funny or serious and in the form of a skit, demonstration project or song, with a goal of inspiring others to live sustainably. The winner will be selected by students and Sustainable CUNY leaders, based on both content and public viewership, so encourage your family and friends to view your selection. The winner will be announced Earth Day 2009. Submit Video
Visit the Sustainable CUNY website for more news.
Crisis PR, 2.0
The hyper-kinetic web-celeb Gary Vaynerchuck got his site hacked. This is how he used it to his advantage.
To Post Or To Feed?
I was going to post links to a variety of Romenesko’s posts, but I decided it was more efficient to put a feed on the right side of this blog. This article about CNN’s “Why The Hell Not?” attitude is what originally moved me to blog, but in keeping with Jarvis’ “Cover what you do best and link to the rest” philosophy, I’ll shut up and let Mr. Romenesko do the blogging.
Making the Web a Better Place To Read
My obsession with subject-verb-object construction aside, the web is not the most grammatically sound place to have existed. As writer and blogger Erin Kissane notes, web copy is often created by time-pressured folks who are not writers.
Kissane takes on the Quixotic, yet noble, quest to make the web a more readable place in her post on A List Apart. Much of what she says refers to marketing, but clarity is a goal of marketers and journalists alike. Besides, Kissane has a pretty cool hair-do and she is worth linking to for that reason alone.
Christopher Dickey: New Media Makes Reporting Better
Christopher Dickey from Newsweek speaks to Steve Strasser’s class at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
