Tag: news

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Video: Artist Cole Sternberg on His ‘The Content is Bleeding Through’ Installation

I interviewed Cole Sternberg (no relation) last weekend at the unveiling of his new installation. I love the theme and concept of the work, however, i can’t possibly imagine taking the time to rewrite such asinine content all over someone’s walls, ceilings and floors. Cole did it over the course of seven months at a back house on the residence of Normandie Keith in the Hollywood Hills. The 24-hour newscycle, gossip media, and technology such as Twitter has brought the future into our laps and shirt-pockets. Cole calls this a “vision for this apocalyptic moment when media and technology have pushed us so far that all the content blurs together.”

Video and interview below as well as photos from the event.

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Pixies Play 33 Songs for 33 Miners in Chile

pixies black francis chileThe Pixies made the most of their first-ever headlining gig in Santiago, Chile last night, capturing the celebratory emotion of the just-completed Mina San José rescue and bottling it up into a 33-song set.

Listen to the crowd react as Black Francis prefaces the set by recognizing the need celebrate this day and adding, “so we’re going to play 33 songs tonight….”

Can’t possibly dream up a more timely (or easier to write) press release for someone in music PR:

The band’s scheduled performance happened to fall on the very night that the 33 miners were dramatically rescued from 69 unimaginable days trapped 2000 feet below the surface of the earth.

I’m doubly envious as I felt a bit short-shrift by the last Pixies show I saw (at the Palladium this year) especially compared to a 33-song set (plus two-song encore).
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New OECD report on “The future of news and the Internet”

The death of the newspaper is greatly exaggerated — generally speaking from the point of view of the OECD. Aside from in the U.S., the decline in revenues is on par with the general financial decline in recent years.

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).

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Small but Reckless Anti-Obama Media: How Do You Like Your Crow?

fox news loves joe the plumber hates israel

Campaign Coverage FAIL! FoxNews has been striking out all over the place in recent weeks, along with much of the so-called Conservative media. It’s enough for them to actually go and interview this Joe the Plumber hack again but to quote his admittedly racy and barely informed point-of-view in a headline?!? It looks funny. It looks straight outta the Onion. But it’s effective as another hollow strawman for anyone reaching reaching reaching for reasons to vote for McCain.

Now I don’t disagree with Jack Shafer’s assessment today in Slate, that journalists will have us all retching upon hyperbole and re-statement to the effect that “Obama’s candidacy is momentous, without parallel, and earth-shattering, so they can’t file garden-variety pieces about the ‘winds of change’ blowing through Washington.”

At least I won’t be as ill as I was in 2004, when I couldn’t sleep for days after Bush was crowned a second time, or in 2000, when I was overseas and left to make excuses for my country’s inability to select a winner in a national election in the world’s bastion of democracy. And then, weeks later, to hand the keys to the kingdom to The Imbecile.

But I digress. The GOP doesn’t appear to have an October surprise that will stick. Not in today’s 24-hour social media climate. McCain is literally cracking himself up on the campaign trail thanking his pundits for not eating up the Hall-Obama-ween candy. Muahahaha, he might add.

Here’s a sample of what’s been brought to the table by the ever-desperate anti-Obama minority — and yes, it is a highly-unbalanced minority — in recent days:

DrudgeReportLOLWTFBBQ: The site trumpeted a headline featuring audio that was edited to change Obama’s words in a 2001 interview on Chicago Public Radio’s midday program Odyssey (which, by the way, featured the all-time best NPR theme song, as written by OKGo for host Gretchen Helfrich). WBEZ promptly delved through the archives and posted the unadulterated audio on it’s web site, along with an article clearing up the smear.

There’s the continued attempt of McCain backers (and now, apparently, the campaign itself) to get the LA Times to release video of Obama at a party for Rashid Khalidi, a former University of Chicago professor but also — or so they claim in right blogistan — a former PLO operative.

Regardless of Obama’s alleged association with Khalidi, it is McCain who is on the record has having given more than just a hug to the Palestinian sympathizer, in a relationship that dates back to 1993, according to Seth Colter Walls in the Huffington Post:

A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi’s Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. (See grant number 5180, “West Bank: CPRS” on page 14 of this PDF.)

I could go on and on and if I have the time, I will. For now, prepare to eat crow, and until then you might just want to hide your hands behind your back.