My obstacles to reading the news

I went to read the Boston Globe editorial "Indy magazines across spectrum challenge postal rate hikes designed by Time/Warner" and I could if I bought the article for JUST 4.95! This is ridiculous I don't think an editorial in support of Indy media should have a jacked up price when they are criticizing Time/Warner for jacking price. I find this highly ironic and highly annoying that I can not read this article.

Try for your self:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2007/04/27/dont_stamp_out_brainy_mags/

Update on Huff Post and AOL

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/28/huffington-post-aol

Arianna has certainly provided a platform for Bill Lasarow and other journalist to rally around. What I find interesting is that it wasn't only AOL that sparked some animosity between them. It seems like the Huff Post accepting and soliciting free articles from journalist is the crux of the problem. I was interesting that in an effort to fix the tension Huff Post decided to categorize "journalist" and "bloggers" separately, the first of which would be paid for their freelance work the second that would not. Lasarow responded, "This is a start, but not good enough – given that a large number of these "bloggers" are, in fact, professional journalists. " Its is interesting that the Huff Post would delineate between those two terms so starkly.

I also think the idea of a virtual picket line is really interesting. He didn't elaborate how exactly this would work but with advertising being so driven by number of clicks you get it seems like it could be an effective way to boycott online businesses.

Robert Greenwald

Part of what is so interesting to me about Robert Greenwald's idea of having the audience pay for the film before it produced is that it truly allows consumers to drive the market. The way our economy works right now is supposed to be consumer driven but often I feel like it is a chicken and the egg senario. Does Walmart produce shoes for a third of the price because of consumers or do people become consumers because Walmart can produce shows for a third of the price (this applies not only to Walmart but to all major chains). Companies are always trying to anticipate the consumer yet the consumer has become so materialistic they get things purely because they are so cheap. That being said I think this model would be really beneficial for media on a whole. Bloggers have already started doing this, they receive funding before they move forward. The question that strikes me is how can we apply this model to large scale media. It may not be possible to do for everything that is published but taking the "refritos" idea from south america, what if news corporations set up a part of their site in which all of the stories are available for you to pay to have a journalist re-investigate. Set a number like $100 and if a story raises that much then it will be reinvestigated. Obviously there is still a lot of possible corruption and interference but it would be a great way for consumers to drive economically the content they're getting, since it seems like that is the only way to get through to mainstream media.

Saturday- IndyMedia

I feel like we see a lot of Leftists or Rightist or special topic independent media outlets. They have specific aims and I agree with the are very editorial. Even outlets like Huff Post which are focused on providing a NYT style independent source have a very strong editorial voice. Indy Media seems to be different in that is a collective reference site. What confused me a little was how their editorial process works. Do they have fact checkers of contributing stories? They seem open to any submission not just journalist and while a platform that allows any one to provide coverage how do they categorize it. I looked at their website but had trouble figuring out exactly how this process worked. I liked that the article said that like any publication you need to look at the site with a critical eye, this is a good sign for the honesty of a site when they admit that like mainstream media they can also get things wrong.

Saturday

As I was sitting on the plane reading my Cosmo I came across an article about work advice from none other then Arianna Huffington. I was quite surprised to find that she contributed to Cosmopolitan Magazine. The article was all about advice about jobs, she was this months featured career genius. Her answer about how to keep your job during downsizing or wether to move companies were pretty much what I would expect them to be. What interested me is why she agreed to appearing in this particular magazine. Cosmo is a guilty pleasure of mine and I find it interesting how they hype-sexualize women. In some ways it is empowering but sometimes the way in which they tell women to attract male attention is very submissive and sometimes derogatory, although for the most part they do a good job. This I would think is a very opposite message then Arianna would want to send. I did some research online about Arianna and Cosmos interactions and the only thing I found was a Huff Post article about how Cosmo had taken sexual words out of a cover because advertisers were unhappy with the word Orgasm. Also interestingly enough the most glamorized picture of Arianna I have ever seen was with this article. All of this surprised me because I never thought that a media savvy person like Arianna would be a fan of Cosmo, let alone a contributor.