The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Now a book, a film and books on tape… I am spending the month of August in a house on Exuma, one of the Bahama Out Islands. Let’s say it makes The Hamptons look like Staten Island. I have...
Read moreToward A New Architecture For Media
The experience of Current TV taught me two things: There were literally millions of people who were ready to contribute content of all kinds in video 99% of it was junk. It was junk because no one had ever...
Read moreIntellectual Bankruptcy for Journalism Schools
RIPNYT There was a curious juxtaposition of stories in this morning’s news: Mark C. Taylor, former chairman of the humanities department at Williams College (my Alma Mater), and currently chairman of the department of religion at Columbia University wrote...
Read moreSpindletop
It’s a gusher! On January 10, 1901, the world changed forever. Captain Anthony F. Lucas was trying his luck drilling for oil in east Texas. The landscape was hot and dry, dotted with salt domes, the remnant from some...
Read moreThe Transcendant Power of Images
Ernest Bujok – ink on paper – silkscreen When I graduated from Williams College, I was fortunate enough to receive a Thomas Watson Foundation Fellowship. That grant allowed me to spend the next three years traveling around the world...
Read moreSouth Africa Heads Toward Zimbabweland
All hail the Glorious Leader! How soon things change. The World Cup from South Africa was supposed to consecrate a new era for South Africa in the world. Modern. Sophisticated. Advanced. Now, President Zuma has made a clear demonstration...
Read moreElisabeth Kubler-Ross and the Newsroom
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross We spent the past few months, off and on, having a series of protracted meetings, demonstrations and conversations with a major US network news organization. Which one does not matter, because in truth, they’re all in about...
Read moreHow Do You Know We’re Living In The Roman Empire?
The idiot in chief… One of the most influential books I ever read was Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Published in 1984, it was seminal in shaping my thinking about the impact of television on our culture....
Read moreThe McCormick Reaper and The Death of Journalism
When the term Broadcasting meant something else entirely Even though I am sitting on an ‘out island’ in the Bahamas this August, it does not mean I am not working! This morning, I spent an hour on the phone...
Read moreThe Library of Youtube
Yeah…lemme see American Idol from last week…. In 1988 I left my job as a producer at CBS News to go to Gaza with a small video camera and start shooting my own stories. I spent a month in...
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