Month: May 2002

Jason Pitzl sent me a link to this Laura Flanders column on how Google apparently pulled ads placed by Body Shop founder Anita Roddick because she called John Malkovich a “a vomitous worm.” Google says that her site violated their editorial policy against ‘sites that advocate against groups or individuals.’ So does that mean the…

Oh yeah, givin’ the beat-down to the man: Look Out, Corporate America, Here Comes My Pirate Radio Station.” A six block radius that rocks the onion.

The Washington Post has a profile of the regional Clear Channel operation in the DC area. Sure, Clear Channel is losing money this year, but they’re still laying waste to the radio dial while they bleed. My prediction: either they’ll swallow a few more companies in different sectors of the entertainment business to bolster their…

The Electroinc Frontier Foundation put together a fun and informative Flash animation on the evils of Hollywood’s plot to coerce Congress into locking up all our intellectual property (via boingboing).

Couldn’t agree more: Alen Cox asks in the Media Guardian, “But who are the real pirates?” A hint — it’s not kids with camcorders.

Analyzing AOL/Time-Warner — Profits and “Success” Aren’t the Real Story The On-Line Journalism Review’s senior editor J.D. Lasica has written a fairly lengthy analysis of AOL/Time-Warner and its impact on journalism, especially for millions of people for whom the AOL start screen is their first welcome to the Internet every day. Lasica rightly points out…

DIY Is Key To Enlivening the Forgotten and Missed Places Detroit’s Metro Times profiles — with only a tiny bit of condescension — a new Detroit anarchist bookstore / infoshop called Idle Kids (via NewPages weblog — check out their ‘Zine Rack). This is the type of project I like to hear about, especially coming…

Working Assets Radio’s Laura Flanders — previously of FAIR — details the threats to small independent publishers in her most recent column. Market power = extortion power; nothing less, nothing more.

In my referrer logs I found reclaimthemedia.org, which is the home of the Cascadia Media Alliance. The site’s an organizing point for the Community Media Conference in Seattle, Sept 9-14. It looks like the site is just getting off the ground, but there are already some good articles that I’ll have to read.

Explaining the Stakes of Media Consolidation & Deregulation Neil Hickey, editor at large of the Columbia Journalism Review, does a little question-and-answer style overview of the issues involved in media ownership regulation. For the most part he makes things clear and honestly confronts reality, such as in these answers: Q: If this subject is so…