Comments on: Maybe the medium is just the medium (Or, why are we so worked up about Twitter?)

By: jimmy longoria

jimmy longoria — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:59:37 +0000

Technological change has always been with western society. It’s social and political control is what has evolved and caused the “pain”. Each “software development will have it’s effect-this decade it elected a Black man to run a white society. This effect is more relief than pain. But look to yourself and your place in society to see where the real shift in what is “culture” will occur. Also take into consideration what is happening right now in the “new media space”.

Visit an apple store at 9:00 am-estimate the “age average” of the eager apple learners- a revolution is about to hit the “arts”- it is the “retiree”. It will their values and tastes that will drive the future of “digital journalism”. That and the emergence of the younger cohesive social and economic groups.

Caution to all of you mid career crash victims-careful of the “fences you have built” you may have fenced yourselves out.

coyote global

By: Gregg Reed

Gregg Reed — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:33:47 +0000

I have developed an area of internet social networking that I’m surprised the social networking sites have not adopted, family networks. At the end of the 1990’s I could see that my mother’s and father’s relatives were aging, and I used Yahoo! groups to make two networks to inform the families of emergencies. Since I started many of the relatives have died “online,” but the inter-family chatting is continuing day and night even today.

By: Gregg Reed

Gregg Reed — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:48:58 +0000

Social networking is an innovative approach to using the world-wide-web, and it is another feature that promotes the world-wide-web now. I’ve found that the social networks are not as innovative as the networking. You can network with students from your college days, co-workers from your company, and professional colleagues. These networks are too old and intransient for me professionally and artistically. My network affilations really lean toward international affiliations and with state-of-the-art innovators around the world.

By: Gregg Reed

Gregg Reed — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:55:58 +0000

In the fall of 2008, editor Troy Pieper was discussing whether “Art Review and Preview” would continue publishing due to lack of funding, but I think there are about 10 back issues on newsprint or .pdf. It’s an old-media newspaper about the arts in the Twin Cities. See http://www.artreviewandpreview.org/

By: Gregg Reed

Gregg Reed — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:29:04 +0000

The changes in media keep my head turning around the room. Today we’re all flying on the same plane, waiting for our next disaster. Once, the medium was the message. Next, the massage. And now its the work out. Or maybe the text message. I now use all of the types of news media in my home office together. News is up-to-the-minute 24 hours a day. The news starts with my RSS. If it’s time for another disaster, on go network and cable TV. Next, e-mail messages fly to my relatives and friends who might be involved. And more e-mail messages go to news rooms. If I can’t trust what I see, I wait for the newspaper article in the morning. If I need more background, I turn to web site. News is now a chain reaction of media outlets. The Insitute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota has provided public events about new media for many years. See http://www.inms.umn.edu

By: Susannah Schouweiler

Susannah Schouweiler — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:13:54 +0000

Bonus-bonus link
Some excellent analysis of media trends and some well-considered thoughts on the future of news: http://xark.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/news-futures-a-whats-next-overview.html

By: Susannah Schouweiler

Susannah Schouweiler — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:39:37 +0000

I'm with you Sheila! I rely on an RSS reader (I do love my iGoogle) and a bunch of news feeds to sort out the content I want to keep track of. Content aggregating newsletters, RSS feeds, issue-specific blogs are the only way to go--I don't know what I'd do without them. For folks who are looking for a place to begin, here are just a few of the arts-related aggregators and blogs whose news feeds I check in with every day: Artsjournal.com (national, multidisciplinary links to major newspapers' arts coverage) Arts and Letters Daily (national, newspaper & major magazine coverage of arts and culture news) Flavorwire (national, with emphasis on pop cultural, visual arts, and design news) The Rumpus (national, w/ emphasis on books and film) The Art Newspaper (national, visual arts emphasis) Art Fag City (national, fine arts) MinnPost's Arts Arena blog (local) Pioneer Press and Strib, of course MSP mag, City Pages, and MPR's arts section Twin Cities Daily Planet's arts headlines (local) 3-Minute Egg (local arts vlog, lots of arts event previews) And, if you're not subscribing to mnartists.org's own access+ENGAGE, by all means, sign up for that too (If anyone wants a bunch of recommendations for book coverage online, I'd be happy to hook you up with some of those too. Just email me and I'll send you a list: editor@mnartists.org)

By: Sheila Smith

Sheila Smith — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:29:29 +0000

I think the shift to those kind of tools and methods is already occurring. For example, I get an email from Politics in Minnesota every morning that aggregates all of the interesting political news from blogs and newspapers. It’s basically just a page of links and headlines, and if I’m interested I click through. It means I don’t have to read all of the relevant blogs and newspapers and get right to what I’m interested in, so it saves me hours and hours of sifting. We need more of that. If I had the time, I’d do that with arts news every morning. But you need a staff person who is doing the aggregating.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:33:13 +0000

I like how you have presented this recent spate of stories!
I’m fascinated by the mixed reactions as well. Somewhere between “the sky if falling” and “this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius” we have the roller-coaster of living through a major shift in the way knowledge, words and images are transmitted, in the arts, in news and in schools. Our responses will also range all along the spectrum, as is the case now: some people pride themselves on not owning a TV, some watch TV while they twitter and live blog about it to their friends. Libraries are more crowded than ever; the magazine racks in B and N have dozens of new publications; some people never pay attention to the news in any format while others are getting press passes as bloggers and video-journalists. People are making art and news instead of just consuming it, in news ways. Instead of the filters of institutions with big capital (like newspapers) there will spring up other kinds of filters, some of which we can arrange as we please, like the RSS feeds on a Google Reader or the favorites in our Bookmarks. Some of them will be built on trust and transparency. Vinyl records are no longer the only way you can buy music, and they haven’t disappeared either. They are being put to new uses.
Today a blog friend whom I’ve never met in person asked a question on Twitter that I was able to answer for him. The photo you’ve used in this picture was taken by another blog friend (whom I have met) who tweeted about it, which led me to this post. But I quite Facebook because of the “noise” of meaningless updates. We’ll sort it out, but we will need to figure out what the new forms of literacy will be.

By: Susannah Schouweiler

Susannah Schouweiler — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:29:11 +0000

Sarah, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. If we’re going to have a flood of new content coming at us from all quarters, we have to be able to filter it down to just what we want. It’s definitely pretty raw out there still. In fact, I’m hoping it’s just that need you mention–for distillation and for useful help navigating to what you want instead of being overwhelmed by the mess of stuff that you don’t–that will keep editors like me in work. Maybe you can find a handful folks you trust, each with their own areas of peculiar expertise and interest, who can go a long way toward sifting through all that mass of information for you.

And that will leave you time to read the print stuff you love. I don’t think print will die, I just think it’ll not be front and center anymore. I have a feeling the best of print journalism will survive: http://tbm.thebigmoney.com/articles/impressions/2009/03/17/magazine-isnt-dying

And today, I’m feeling like a cockeyed optimist: Maybe what remains of print will be only the loveliest stuff, the most painstakingly produced, the very long-form essays we both love. And since it won’t have to be the solitary means of written communication any more (nor bear the brunt of the burden for financial gain), maybe print publishing can be a boutique operation, a loss leader of sorts and something done for love instead of profit.