Filed by Bil at 9:00 am under Fightin' Words, Stuff to Read, The Media
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Quick point of interest: while reading a post from socialmediaexaminer.com (don’t judge) about social media trends in business (I beg you don’t judge), I somehow found my way to a different article about what’s new this week in social media (for the love of Pete don’t judge). I took the time to watch a video about an iPad-only magazine, because for some reason every video I’ve ever seen on Vimeo has been between moderately and awesomely cool. I don’t know how Vimeo attracts cooler users than YouTube, but it does.

Richard Branson Launches Project, an iPad-Only Magazine: Project is “the first global magazine app for creative people about creative people.” Do you think this is the future of publishing?

PROJECT magazine demo - issue 1 from PROJECT on Vimeo.

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Filed by Bil at 2:42 pm under Fightin' Words, Stuff to Read, The Media
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Print is not dead. Don’t say print is dead. Not even cassette tapes are dead, so print certainly still has a place in the world.

Print is, however, more specialized than it used to be. There aren’t quite as many books or magazines as there were ten or fifteen years ago, and there are definitely fewer news publications. In my time here in Chicago, I’ve seen at least three highly popular weekly print papers cease paper production altogether.

What this means – among other meanings – is that people who print things are much more discerning about what to print and what not to print. The e-mail revolution is a win for trees, but for writers, it narrows your chances of getting your work into print, and it drastically reduces your odds of getting paid to write.
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Filed by Bil at 12:10 pm under Fightin' Words, Social Issues, The Media
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It’s just as well that LeBron James decided not to come to Chicago. What Chicago does NOT need right now are two things: 1) continued pointless media frenzy over a national-spotlight athlete, and 2) another super-rich celebrity who doesn’t tip his waiter.
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Filed by Bil at 12:52 pm under Pop Culture, The Media
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I think it’s time for Hollywood to consider the minivan as a viable source of suave, robotic awesomeness. Too often the hardcore spies get a sexy little European roadster while their team of technicians sits in a clunky full-size work van. For the sake of saving money on budget, though, I propose that filmmakers could maximize their efficiency by putting the whole team into one fully-functional - and stylish - minivan.
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Filed by Bil at 8:44 pm under Fightin' Words, Stuff to Read, The Media
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So - as I took a break from preparing for the future to take a glance at what’s happening in the present, I couldn’t help but notice World Cup scores. Team USA is out, but for once in our lifetime, we got closer to the cup than England, France, and Italy did. Had I been paying closer attention to Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates, I might have known that sooner.

But something struck me: I didn’t need to know that any sooner than I did. Its relevance to my life is pretty low. The World Cup is just something I take a mild interest in every four years.
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Filed by Bil at 7:05 pm under Fightin' Words, Shameless Plugs, The Arts, The Media
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The amazingest news of the week is that Dream Theatre won both Best Off-Loop Theatre Company and Best New Play (for the Agon Trilogy) from the Chicago Reader! The second part is especially amazing since “Orestes,” the third play in the trilogy, hasn’t even opened yet.

And speaking of “Orestes,” it occurs to me that June has flown by and we open in a few short weeks now. I am going to have to memorize my lines at some point.
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Filed by Lance at 10:31 pm under General, Love, Pop Culture, Social Issues, The Arts, The Media
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In honor of our British opponents in today’s World Cup match, let’s start with some 90’s BritPop:

She’s in a family full of eccentrics
She’s done things I never expected
And I need more time

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Filed by Lance at 6:00 pm under General, Hatemail, Love, Stuff to Read, The Arts, The Media
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I ran across THXTHXTHX [via], and thought it’s really interesting. Thank-you-note-blog. An Anti-Hatemail!

Filed by Bil at 7:49 pm under The Media
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I keep coming back to the future of journalism, perhaps because I care, or perhaps because BuzzMachine is near the top of my bookmarks on my browser. The most recent article from Jeff Jarvis over at this blog reprints a study regarding consumers’ willingness (or lack thereof) to pay for news content on the internet. I was going to hop into this discussion, already 40 comments in, when it dawned on me that the comment I was leaving was getting long, so I’ll post it here on my own blog instead, and leave a much shorter one for the BuzzMachine crowd.
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Filed by Bil at 12:21 am under Fightin' Words, Politics, Shameless Plugs, The Arts, The Media
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Education reform has been a very popular notion for a very long time.

Jeff Jarvis, author of one of my favorite blogs, BuzzMachine, recently posted an article titled TEDxNYed: This is bullshit – it is a rant about, among other things, the state of our educational system, and it’s a fairly brilliant comparison to the state of journalism. In one sweeping, somewhat angry blog post, he wrote three of the most fabulous things I’ve read in a blog all year:

1) Just as journalists must become more curator than creator, so must educators.
2) I’ll give the same advice to the academy that I give to news media: Do what you do best and link to the rest.
3) We must stop looking at education as a product – in which we turn out every student giving the same answer – to a process, in which every student looks for new answers. Life is a beta.

He starts the post out by acknowledging the irony of him up on a virtual soapbox, dictating that we ought not be dictated to, so I’m going to take him up on what I perceive to be an invitation to respectfully disagree (even if just to a small degree).
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