Blogs

Across The Media Universe: Slightly Unseemly Bragging Edition

By Brian Montopoli

January 8, 2007 / 12:44 PM EST / CBS News

(CBS)

Saddam Spot: The spread of the Saddam hanging video, says Tim Luckhurst, proves that news editors have lost control of the news agenda. "From the moment the explicit footage appeared on Anwarweb.net, traditional editorial processes were redundant. No editor decided who could witness this tawdry spectacle. Questions of taste were left to viewers as the shaky but powerful images spread via the file-sharing websites YouTube, Google Video and Revver." For new-media enthusiasts, he adds, "the fact that amateur film from a mobile telephone set the global news agenda shows citizen journalism has come of age." As we noted last week, CBS News refused to show the video since it violated network standards.

All Media Is Local: The shift towards media localization continues. "Faced with declining advertising revenues and competition from the Web, midsize, regional dailies across the country have been retrenching in recent years to focus on local news. That has scaled back their Washington coverage, and their national ambitions," notes the New York Times. Related, from last week: "I think intensely local, professionally gathered news is due for a comeback. It's the one thing you can't get anywhere else."

Anchorbot: The Wall Street Journal reports on "News At Seven," which "uses an automated computer program to comb online news outlets for major stories of the day and to pair them with video and still photos culled from sites like Google Images and YouTube." Even the anchor is generated by a computer. For more, check out our post on this very same topic from three months ago.