Meanwhile, boycotting Murdoch

And speaking of scummy "journalism" (???), news today is of many advertisers either pulling their advertising from Rupert Murdoch's sordid British tabloid News of the World or thinking of it in the wake of reports of that paper's hacking into phone records of a missing British teen, later found dead. Good. I like boycotts, and am currently boycotting several brands, organizations and even a company. When the rich and powerful misbehave, they should be punished, and when you have Murdoch's lack of a moral code, let the market do its job.

Of Casey Anthony, Nancy Grace and the modern sob sister

Despite not watching a second of the trial, I've been fascinated by American media's overcoverage of the Casey Anthony murder trial, especially the discussions of the media performance.

Just as I knew was bound to happen, the conversation turned to Headline New''s Nancy Grace whose record is littered with wild accusations, hounding of women -- especially mothers of missing children -- and at least one such young mother driven to suicide.

Roy Peter Clark, one of the truly great writers out there, has pulled things into perspective with a blog calling Grace a modern sob sister. I think that's unfair to sob sisters, although his analogy of Grace leading the townspeople with torches out after Frankenstein's monster is pretty right on. Grace presiding over the Salem Witch Trials or the Spanish Inquisition also seems spot on.

The role of media, especially activist media like Grace, is something that affects us all, if only because we are all tarnished by some.

Are devices getting too complex?

One of the aspects of the new media that I continue to grapple with is the matter of complexity. I've always been an early-adapter, paying premiums for the newest toys, and have a house filled with computers (my wife and I have 8 working computers in our house; we regularly use five of them), iPhones, iPads, DVRs, Apple TV and the like. But how complex do I want my devices?

This week I was struck by two different trends. Yesterday it was Starbucks' plan to pack more into its smart phone application, including the ability to pay for your coffee by holding up your smart phone.

Today, it's a report that consumers are indifferent to Internet-connected TV. Most people -- 62 percent, a survey said -- "are not connected or not capable" and "most plan to stay that way."

A couple of weeks ago, it was a report that smart phones may eliminate keys -- including car keys, using Internet connections.

All this makes me wonder if we are asking too much of our equipment. Is it getting just too complex? Case in point: While I was away recently, my daughter and wife wanted to watch a movie on Netflix, which I connect to a TV using an Apple TV connector box. Reaching Netflix involved changing a TV setting using a cable TV-provided remote to shift to another component, then the Apple TV remote to make the connection with Netflix. Since I generally use these connections, my family didn't know how to get to the film at Netflix, and ended up skipping it.

Seems to me that the plans detailed above -- especially the Internet key option -- are not only complex, but fraught with the possibilities of bad things happening. What if the Internet goes out, and I can't get my car to open. Even a 3g or 4g network can be spotty (using Skype from Italy last month was almost impossible due to the lousy network).

So maybe that 62 percent is opting for simplicity. And they may be right.

Social media rank can pay off

And where do you rank among social media folks? Does it make a difference? Marketing blogger Mitch Joel says it does, and offers evidence.

MSNBC just sort of drifted into lefty stance, Zucker says

Interesting interview with former NBCU chief Jeff Zucker in which he explains how MSNBC came to be "liberal." It wasn't a deliberate reaction to Fox News' right-leaning stance, he said, it just sort of happened. Keith Olbermann's show was a hit, so they added a companion left show, then another.

What makes it most interesting is that, unlike Fox, Zucker doesn't try to said MSNBC is "fair and balanced." He admits the slant. I don't think Fox can, although there is nothing wrong with advocacy media -- if it admits it's an advocate.

I'm too lazy for the news, I guess

While reading yet another breathless pronouncement that Twitter would become the new newspaper, I suddenly had an epiphany: I'm just too lazy for that news media future.

The story, from PC magazine, talks about setting up a TweetDeck alert box on the corner of my computer screen where I can monitor the latest news feeds from selected publications. That's where my laziness comes in. It's not just that I'm way too lazy to set up an efficient TweetDeck that "marvelously condenses your social media profiles and data streams into one highly customizable application," but also that I'm too lazy to keep checking the thing constantly so that news that I care about isn't bumped by even newer news that I care about (that, by the way, is my problem with Twitter; by the time I get around to checking it, important tweets telling me Bill Simmons' opinion about the latest NBA trade or my niece ???'s [name withheld to protect the innocent] latest heartthrob are long gone, bumped by the likes of "Happy 4th of July" or "Today in new ways for the @cubs to lose -- a WILD PITCH," which are the two most recent Tweets).

It's hard work keeping up with all the social media. Facebook posts are here, then buried under even newer posts. If I just weren't so lazy, I'd spend all my time reading the new media. Or I could just read a newspaper, either on paper or online. I will point out that despite the fact that "everybody knows" the evening TV news is dead since "everyone" watches the 24/7 cable channels, viewership for the lowest-rated TV evening news sho is about seven times that of the highest rated cable channel. I guess there are a lot of lazy people.

Fox News' beginnings in the Nixon White House

It's almost too easy, but I never could resist: The folks who brought you the Watergate burglary also brought you Fox News. Gawker.com, using the Freedom of Information Act, found a memo it dates to 1970 with handwritten notes by Roger Ailes, who later was to found Fox News and still heads it, outlining, as the memo was titled, "A Plan to Put the GOP on TV News."

The plan is every bit as heavy-handed and as partisan as could be expected from the White House in that era (and would have been just as heavy-handed and partisan if the Democrats had thought it of during the Johnson Administration, I suspect). It also is stunningly dismissive of the audience: people watch television for news instead of reading newspapers, books or magazines because "People are lazy. With television you just sit--watch--listen. The thinking is done for you." This is indeed the thinking that led to Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. At no point is "fair and balanced" part of the equation.

The plan reads like a blueprint for Fox News channel and the corporation's feeding partisan stories to its TV stations around the county. This is a vital part of our media history. I recommend you read the 16-page memo then think about where the media is today -- and how vulnerable it is to political manipulation.

Sometime, how a story is told is more illuminating than the story

What I found most interesting about the Wall Street Journal's take on the book "The Deal From Hell" was not only the excellent writing of Reason's Matt Welch, but the more than subtle pro-corporate bias shown in the account of the declines of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.

As could be expected from the editor of the nation's best libertarian magazine, Welch retells the story in a compelling manner. As could be expected from the new Murdoched Wall Street Journal, the incredible mismanagement is largely excused ("What's lacking is any sense of realism about newspapers' collapsing finances and any exploration of the newsroom's own culpability in failing to adapt," he writes). This isn't to say that Welch's basic story line -- after riding high, the newspaper industry is grappling to find new revenue to replace that which fled to the Internet or whereever -- is wrong, but an analysis this well-done needed balance. Maybe that's too much to ask of the WSJ in this new era.

A bold expansion of Wi-Fi and its implications

A month teaching in Italy meant not only lots of gelatto, pasta and wine, but dealing with a country struggling with what to do about wireless Internet access. Wi-Fi is rare and the nation's 3-G network was spotty. All this led to some changes in the way I sampled media. For example, the iPad was virtually useless since the spotty 3-G signal and lack of Wi-Fi meant that most of its links didn't work.

But that's not the case here where Wi-Fi is spreading like wildfire -- the latest is that Taco Bells will offer free Wi-Fi as part of a huge multimedia package just announced -- and it set me to thinking about how closely tied distribution and media success are. This, of course, supports the Obama administration's drive to expand Wi-Fi nationally (even though our state's no-nothings are trying to stop its spread) and the growing use of 3-G and 4-G networks.

I know my iPhone's range has extended my media options. I thought of how its changed the other day while checking my email during the wait for my order at Kopps.

At the same time, I noticed while sitting in the Rome airport waiting for my flight back that, even though Wi-Fi and 3-G were available, almost all the waiting passengers were consuming paper: books, magazines and newspapers. It demonstrated that even though instantly-updated media gratification is available, it's not always the best kind. My three-month old New Yorker was what I wanted to read, so I did.

A guide to Twitter for Journalists

OK, so you've decided you want to take the plunge into social media for journalists, and you just don't know where to start (or you're already doing this, but want to do it better). Well, thanks to a tip from an expert, my Marquette colleague and friend Gee Ekachia, aka FvrythingPR , here's a link to the Knight Digital Center's Tutorial "Twitter for Journalists." Don't miss it --and if you're in one of my upcoming classes, you won't miss it since it's going to be required reading.

"The Deal From Hell" sounds like a must-read

Next week I will be back in the U.S., and I'm headed for a bookstore (paper, by the way). The book is called "The Deal From Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers." It's the story of how disaster overcame two once-formidable American newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. I read a great story in the New York Times that summarized the book, and I can hardly wait.

The book is written by James O'Shea, former editor of the Los Angeles Times, which started the decline with its sale to the Tribune Company. O'Shea details the problems, not only the sheer incompetence of the people put in charge of the new company by outsider Sam Zell who bought out the Tribune Company with a highly-leveraged buyout deal. Who are the baddest of the bad guys? Why the bankers, of course.

Read this, then wait for the book.

Is Groupon really the worst deal for businesses?

To at least one cafe owner, Groupon is way beyond a bad deal. Her story tells us a lot about the Wild West we've got going in Internet marketing.