I am now writing a weekly blog post on media in the digital age for KCET’s The Public Note and will also be contributing posts on local policy at 1st and Spring in addition to occasional posts for LAist.

The ongoing “phone hacking” scandal in the UK may seem like a distant and isolated issue considering how limited the reporting has been in the U.S. press but it’s possible that the media is shying away because it hits too close to home.

What’s come to light in the past month in Britain may be indicative of unethical — if not unlawful — behavior that’s become pervasive across all Western media in the digital age.

At the center of attention is News Corporation, owned by Rupert Murdoch. News Corp. executives will meet with board members in Los Angeles this week for the first time since the scandal, which had been brewing for years, finally broke.

Please click here to continue reading the full article at KCET.org. The following is a brief excerpt.

The fact that News Corp. (and its subsidiaries News Limited in Australia and News International in the UK) has extensive holdings across multiple media platforms suggests that its next moves represent an accountability moment.

In today’s information age it’s not so easy to fabricate stories without getting caught. But the media business is still dominated by the need to have a growing audience to sustain interest from advertisers. The picture emerging from the scandal in the UK is that media outlets will go to great lengths to break stories and attain new information — even illegally — and pay whatever price necessary to keep authorities, whistleblowers, and employees quiet.

Leveraging influence with authorities through payment or blackmail is verboten but it’s an issue that crosses seamlessly over to News Corp’s U.S. holdings, which include Fox News. Through his stable of newspapers, magazines, and broadcast holdings, Murdoch has “strenuously endorsed political candidates and causes and, at times, secured government favors that serve their business interests,” writes Frank Rich in New York which recently published a list of politicians on News Corp.’s payroll.

It’s possible that de-consolidation of the News Corp. empire could be good for both Murdoch and the future of private media and the public interest, as Nicholas Lemann recently suggested on the Council on Foreign Relations website.

But it may be best for independent journalists to carry on watching, reporting and holding all public figures and corporate media accountable for such transgressions.

A Los Angeles-based startup with a mission to enable multimedia storytelling in communities worldwide that otherwise lack necessary resources and training was awarded a $200,000 grant by the Knight Foundation on Wednesday.

The Tiziano Project‘s Tiziano 360 project was one of 16 ideas to win a prestigious Knight News Challenge grant awarded to fund internationally relevant innovative media and digital news concepts.

Tiziano 360 is intended to help communities better tell their stories by building an accessible, HTML5-based multimedia storytelling platform. The next iteration of the project is based on 2010’s Kurdistan 360, for which Tiziano Project won an award at SXSW.

The Tiziano 360 project is described in the Knight press release:

Using visually dynamic, multimedia storytelling, the Tiziano Project provides communities with the equipment, training and web platform needed to report on stories that affect their residents’ lives. Tiziano will build an improved platform based on the award-winning project http://360.tizianoproject.org/kurdistan/. Using HTML5, the platform will display the work of professional and community journalists and will enable news organizations, community groups and individuals to easily manage digital content for mobile and tablet devices. The project will also build an interactive map to serve as a hub for projects developing similar sites in their communities and enable direct communication between these communities and their audiences.

Learn more about Tiziano Project in the video below:

Originally posted at LAist on June 22, 2011

UPDATE: Later reports indicated that Hetherington was killed in the attack while Hondros and at least one other journalist were seriously wounded. Hondros later died of his wounds at the hospital.

Hetherington was last heard from via Twitter on Tuesday: “In besieged Libyan city of Misrata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO.”

Three other journalists were injured in the mortar attack that killed Hetherington and Hondros in Misrata according to ABC News. The New York Times is only confirming the death of Hetherington, stating that Chris Hondros and one other photographer remain hospitalized in “grave” condition. Photojournalist Guy Martin was also reported to be gravely wounded in the attack.

Hetherington’s acclaimed 2010 documentary on the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, “Restrepo,” was nominated for an Academy Award. The film was co-directed by Sebastian Junger.

Chris Hondros’ most recent photos from Misrata, dated April 20, can be seen at Getty Images. In recent years Hetherington worked with ABC’s Nightline, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, among other publications. The Liverpool, UK-born photojournalist was 41 years old.

This post was syndicated from LAist.com, where I am Associate Editor. A direct link to my LAist.com post index is at the top of my blog. This post was originally published here on April 20, 2011 at 10:40 a.m.

Click through to the videos in the presentation. Especially BP Spills Coffee. Riotous, no? But there’s truth to every bit of the parody. While BP was too focused on its record-breaking earnings and deflecting blame, it needed to address the reality of what was — and is — a very human tragedy in the eyes and on the active social networks of the public. And BP was way too late to that game.

The U.S. government just approved the first permit for deep-water drilling in the gulf since the disaster and there remains no known fix should history repeat itself. But our consumer culture didn’t get to where it is today out of an abundance of caution. This is where crisis management runs counter to traditional public relations. Organizations cannot wait to get involved on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, they must be proactively engaging and listening to their audiences. Sometimes communication is the only viable regulation.

10. Asteroid Discovery

Scott Manley of the Armagh Observatory visualized 30 years of asteroid discoveries. It’s a straightforward animation that shows planets and asteroids orbiting the sun, with waves of twinkles as discoveries are made. I especially liked the contrast between human and automated discoveries.

9. Driving Shifts Into Reverse

Hannah Fairfield, former editor for The New York Times, and now graphics director for The Washington Post, had a look at gas prices versus miles driven per capita. The chart could’ve easily been an x-y scatterplot, but the extra step was taken to connect the dots so to speak. Points were ordered by time, and turns were clearly explained graphically.

8. The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook

This weekender by Matt McKeon of the IBM Visual Communication Lab explored the changes of Facebook privacy policies over the years. It came right after Facebook had made another update to push for a more public profile. Click on the interactive, and see what becomes public and how many people can see your postings.

7. What Online Marketers Know About You

Along the same privacy lines, this project from Andrew Garcia Philips and Sarah Slobin (plus five data gatherers) of The Wall Street Journal explored what online marketers know about you. I wouldn’t say the visualization itself was super advanced, but thoughtful reporting and company breakdowns really made the whole piece work.

6. Education Nation Scorecard

The Education Nation Scorecard, by Ben Fry-headed Fathom Design, brought together sparse education data, at the national, state, and local level, in a single application. You can easily search for your own school or area to see how it compares to the rest.

5. Nature by Numbers

Nature by Numbers by Cristobal Vila isn’t a typical data visualization piece. It’s more of a demonstration of mathematical concepts, but it’s a beautiful work that must be watched to fully appreciate. You will have a new found appreciate for Fibonacci, guaranteed.

4. Tracking the Oil Spill

The BP oil spill was the center of public attention for a good part of the year, and The New York Times did a great job at keeping us updated on all aspects of the spill. This included where the oil spread, what land areas were affected, and effects on wildlife.

3. Polymaps

JavaScript keeps getting faster and is becoming a viable route (over Flash) for visualization on the Web. Polymaps, by SimpleGeo and Stamen, is an open-source JavaScript mapping library that lets you build interactive maps from scratch. I haven’t had a chance to use Polymaps for a project yet, but I’m looking forward to it, and I am sure we will see a number of Polymaps projects spring up next year.

2. Journalism in the Age of Data

During his Knight Journalism fellowship at Stanford, Geoff McGhee interviewed visualization trendsetters on how they deal and what they do with data in Journalism in the Age of Data. Just about every well-known data practitioner (and their work) is featured in the hour-long video. The focus is on journalism, but the topics apply to all types of visualization.

1. Tourist Maps

We’ve seen maps based on Flickr photos before, but most aren’t much more than pictures on a map. Eric Fischer took the next step and looked for where the tourists flock, all based on data available via the Flickr API. Tourist photos are marked red, local photos are marked blue, and photos where tourism could not be determined were marked yellow. He did this for over 100 major cities in the world.

The end result was maps with pockets of tourists and locals. Visiting somewhere new and want an authentic experience? Maybe head towards the blue.

Fischer also had a fine series on race and ethnicity.

And there you have it. Those are my top ten picks for 2010. It was tough ranking all of them, as many of these could’ve placed top honors on a different day. What are your picks for the year?

I view recent developments in technology and media (roughly 1995 – 2005) as nothing short of revolutionary. The incredible pace of technological advancement and increased access to new media and communication tools during those ten years was like nothing we’ve seen in such a short time span and nothing we might see again for generations. From dial-up to WiMax, the browser-less web to OSx and Google Chrome, from buddy chat to Twitter, and low quality streaming audio to YouTube and video chat. Not to mention, TVs and monitors are now flat and gigantic.

We can have it all now and slowly the big picture is coming together, new tools and modes of communication are growing more comfortable for greater proportions of the global population. In many ways we’ve already leapfrogged adoption of previous generations’ groundbreaking tech. For example, many Native American reservations in the southwest were NEVER wired for telephones but now are not only on the mobile grid but have hi-speed WiFi setups such as the Tribal Digital Village.

Even early adopters of social tools on the web still find themselves in a sort of honeymoon phase — so excited to have the new tools yet not ready to get practical with them and in other cases hesitant to engage peers and family members who may be slower to pick up on new tech. Even the media is waiting for the proverbial “other shoe” to drop, slipping off the heels of privacy issues (Facebook), feature flaws (Apple), or media companies getting in the way of foreign policy (Google).

We’re nowhere near seeing the potential of the internet as a communication device and as a powerful social tool.

But I cringe a tiny bit when I see one of my mentors and colleagues minimizing the scope of social media’s — and the web’s global reach. That was my first reaction to reading the beginning of Geoff Livingston‘s next book, currently titled The Fifth Estate. Now, I know Geoff is not looking to repeat what he already covered in Now is Gone but I hope to see broader strokes applied from a global perspective.

For many Americans, the rise of social media is tied to a political shakeout due to blogger backlash or an embarrassing clip of a candidate memorialized on YouTube. Geoff points to the election of Jim Webb as Virginia senator in 2006, which happened after a pivotal YouTube video led to a destructive backlash against the incumbent George Allen — the infamous “‘Macaca’ moment.”

I had a similar awakening through the rapid rise and fall of the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. Dean’s campaign was the first test of the Netroots, in which bloggers on the progressive left, behind the brilliance of political strategist Joe Trippi, rallied behind Dean and turning him into a formidable candidate in a battle that was largely viewed as Kerry vs. Gore. Influencers in the blogosphere got on board, spread the word, and suddenly the people had their candidate, in spite of what the mainstream media was calling a two-man race.

But Dean’s undoing was not unlike Allen’s — and after a strong showing in the Iowa caucus, shot himself in the foot with the “Dean Scream.” There may not have been YouTube (or even Twitter and Facebook) at the time, however, the Dean Scream shot around the world, gaining “cult-like status on the web” thanks to social media, blog posts, and audio remixes.

For people in many countries, however, the rise of these new social devices and online tools have been marked more by mobile phones than online social media platforms — at least to this point. News and photos from the scene of the July 2005 London bombings were spread via SMS messages from people on the trains to their loved ones and photos uploaded directly to Flickr and other photo sharing sites like moblog.co.uk.

But it’s not just how social media has influenced how news is reported and affected the way political campaigns are managed. It’s about how these revolutionary technlogies enable a freer flow of information between agents of social change and primary points for action.

In 2003, journalists first got word of the severity of the SARS epidemic thanks to an SMS message from medical sources in China (read about this and more in Dan Gillmor‘s We the Media). Had it not been for these SMS messages and the ensuing global communications on listservs among medical professionals scrambling for a vaccine, the global scale of SARS could have been much worse — the Chinese media and government certainly weren’t letting on about it.

Personally I don’t like the term Fourth Estate and I certainly don’t think that our newly enhanced and increasingly social media need the badge of being a Fifth Estate — it’s all the same — and it seems to me that media in general can do a much better job of holding the government in check. Ironically (or maybe not) the term Fourth Estate refers to the press as a fourth branch of British parliament (or the three French states-general, as Wikipedia would have it).

Bollocks, I say! More branches does not make the tree grow taller, faster. Let’s take advantage of these revolutionary times, adapt and consolidate for the greater good and, like Wells wrote, save society from collapse and bring hopefulness to future generations.

Part 2 in an series of posts and cross-published comments inspired by friends’ recent blog posts. This one inspired by “Welcome to the Fifth Estate,” by Geoff Livingston.

Figure 1. Estimated newspaper publishing market decline in OECD countries, 2007-2009 (in per cent)

…[A] new OECD report looking at “The Future of News and the Internet”. It contains new data and analysis on the global newspaper industry and the challenges presented by the Internet. Its main message is that “large country-by-country and title-by-title differences and the data currently do not lend themselves to make the case for “the death of the newspaper”, in particular if non-OECD countries and potential positive effects of the economic recovery are taken into account.” The full report, including data and charts, is available at http://www.oecd.org/document/48/0,3343,en_2649_34223_45449136_1_1_1_1,00.html

After very profitable years, newspaper publishers in most OECD countries face declining advertising revenues, titles and circulation. The economic crisis has amplified this downward development.

About 20 out of 30 OECD countries face declining newspaper readership, with significant decreases in some OECD countries. Newspaper readership is usually lower among younger people who tend to attribute less importance to print media. In OECD countries, the general, regional and local press have been hardest hit and 2009 was expected to be the worst year for OECD newspapers, with the largest declines in the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, Canada, and Spain (but much a much smaller impact on countries such as Austria, Australia (See above).

But in emerging economies, for example, the average daily paid newspaper circulation has been growing for a number of years (see Figure 2 below): by about 35 per cent in the BIICS countries from 2000 to 2008, most notably India with a 45 per cent increase in circulation between 2000 and 2008, South Africa (34 per cent) and China (an estimated 29 per cent). Other countries and continents, including Africa and South America, are also gaining readers. This rise has compensated for the drop in OECD paid circulation and led to an actual increase in the number of world newspapers – by 14 per cent from 2002-2008.

Figure 2. Paid for dailies average total daily circulation
2000-2008 (in millions). Worldwide, OECD, BIICS (Brazil, India, Indonesia, China and South Africa)

Source: OECD based on data from the World Association of Newspapers (WAN).

For more information on OECD work on the Information Economy, see here

www.oecd.org

So yeah, you get to record video — on Apple’s iMovie software which will run you $4.99. It’s about time. recording video has been a native function of nearly all semi-smart and even some stupid-phones since before the original iPhone was announced in 2007. But somehow, this is a revolution.

The only thing relevant to me — which I demonstrate in the video below (shot and livestreamed via the Qik app on the HTC Evo) — is that AT&T is so desperate to lock customers up for another 2 years that it is offering nearly everyone new contracts on the spot (meaning new, subsidized phones). Dial *639# from your phone wait a couple minutes and you’ll likely get the same plea message from AT&T:

As a valued customer we can offer you an upgrade with a new 2-yr commitment and an $18 upgrade fee.

Yes, I can re-up as well, despite never having owned an iPhone — now if only AT&T has a killer Android phone I might consider extending my contract. Of course — I used to take advantage of this shortcut-to-upgrade for $18 quite frequently, first when it was freely allowed as an employee of USC and later when I worked for WMG. Although Sprint’s service has been very good in the few days that I’ve been testing the Evo — much better than 5 years ago when I tested phones from all carriers and found that not one could make calls from my house. Sprint is also matching the corporate discount I received for years from AT&T.

Anyway, as I typically say about overly dramatic Apple releases: WHATEVER. But there is one more thing: FaceTime?!? WHATEVER Get yours June 24th. Or get a phone that runs Android, don’t be restricted by Apple, impress your friends, and be happy.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg just addressed the 1,000+ attendees of TechCrunch Disrupt. Reinforcing his new media acumen, he leads by rattling off all of the updates and check-ins he did on the way over here. “I even put a classified on Craigslist,” he added, “the Cleveland Craigslist” – trying to get LeBron to come to New York (when he managed to compare King James to Arrington taking TechCrunch Disrupt to New York — several in the press section nearly gagged). Bloomberg, of course, was a pioneer in new media and fits right in in this room, have founded Bloomberg L.P. after being fired from Salomon Brothers in the early ’80s.

Bloomberg then goes into pitch mode. NYC needs smart people, developers, entrepreneurs, and engineers apparently. “It doesn’t matter if you’re from New York or New Jersey or New Delhi, if you have an idea or an app, New York City is the place for you. “This is the city where it’s happening….”

Erick Schonfeld: “You know there’s a friendly rivalry between Silicon Valley and the New York tech scene…” “Who says it’s friendly?” joked Bloomberg.

Bloomberg alludes to Bloomberg’s acquisition (resuscitation) of BusinessWeek saying that they lost their way. “You don’t know what is going to be important to you tomorrow” — you need editors, real, trained journalists. But is the mayor out of touch? He still believes most people in the room read the newspaper as delivered each morning. It’s a good thing he’s the mayor and not physically running media operations at his company.

Kickstarter is a new website and funding platform for “artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers….” Started by entrepreneurial blogger and developer Andy Baio, Kickstarter invites anyone to submit a project for funding and/or to fund a project with little risk. [CORRECTION: Baio is the CTO. Kickstarter was started by CEO Perry Chen, along with cofounders Yancey Strickler and Charles Adler.] You invest in the final product which reaps rewards. Should the project not reach its funding goal, your money is returned, so as not to be wasted on something that runs out of fuel halfway through. Baio also created one of the infamously useful-before-Yahoo-bought-it online apps – Upcoming.org.

Kickstarter is a brilliant concept because it feeds on the positivity and karma of giving, sharing, and creating on the web. But it’s not just the ethos — it’s the stories. And the stories behind the stories. Take the story of Greg Bayne an aspiring filmmaker who — with the help of a final push — got the funding to succeed (+ an extra 2 grand) in his goal of raising funds for a documentary on legendary MMA fighter Jens Pulver. It’s addicting enough to follow these projects and see if they get funded or not — there is only 48 hours left to raise another $10k for the Invisible Children project.

UPDATE 3/10: The project was fully funded with ten hours to spare.

But that’s only the beginning — it’s a gift that keeps giving and giving back, through blog updates from those who are funded and in many cases, a final product such as a film, or a DIY mixed-use space, or a book of war comics.

Have a look for yourself and see how many intriguing projects you come across. Or if you start your own, let me know. I want in!