See you on SiL.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 from Newsweek speaks to Steve Strasser’s class at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.