Media Creation

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A Holiday Wish of Gratefulness

Every Friday evening, my family and I light a candle and count some “gratefuls.” These can be mundane happenings of the week or transcendent gifts in our lives: a new birth, health, passing an exam, a new piece of business or promotion, even that we have a meal to share.  The practice is adapted from a friend and former client’s religious tradition. That’s something else I am grateful for: the ability to constantly learn, to be exposed to new and better ways. I’m grateful for fellowship and companionship, for the overflowing enjoyment I can get from a smile or a kind word, and for the ability to do the same for others.

These are all gifts I cherish more than material goods I’m likely to get.  I’m also grateful to business partners, clients, colleagues and people who’ve put so much energy into MediaThon events, and for the smiles and laughter and creative output the events generate. I’m grateful to students I teach and consumers of media I produce and that I can help others make their media more effective.

And I’m grateful that I can wish you a year full of “gratefuls,” abundance and joy.

Dorian

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Why Trump? Ask The Daily Show

Screen Shot 2015-12-02 at 3.35.16 PMMedia scholar Jay Rosen wrote last week of reasons the press is befuddled by Donald Trump’s ascendance even as they call out his bombastic inaccuracies.

Rosen writes that the political press has a weak sense of purpose, suffers “institutional isomorphism” — a sameness across the board — and purports to compete while having “shared assumptions” of what they should and shouldn’t do.

Let me posit another reason Trump is emerging unscathed: The Daily Show. Like SNL, Colbert and John Oliver, Jon Stewart and team turned light on the blind spots of news programming, making “fake” coverage that often hit truths the “real” news shows eschewed.

Stewart was not afraid to show his sense of purpose while his correspondents called out absurdities in the subjects they covered. Stewart would ask politicians, entertainers and authors startlingly pithy questions that “serious” — Jay may prefer “humorless”— reporters are loathe to pose.

The Daily Show mimicked superficial news conventions, the grammar of TV news, while the taking piss out of people who lacked humility and hewed to false objectivity.

“Trump may not be telling the truth, but he’s sure as hell telling their truth,” Rosen quotes Politico’s Glenn Thrush as saying* of the business mogul’s fans. So, too, for The Daily Show. They, to paraphrase Jay’s words, told “people what’s going on … without illusions.”

Twelve percent of Americans said they got their news from the show, “on par” with USA Today and The Huffington Post, the Pew Research Center found.

And it’s into that world, in which the comedic can be more truthful than the real, and “serious” journalists become discounted, that Trump and his ilk can thrive.

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* Corrects earlier version of attribution.

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How to Curate: A Quick Guide

One of the things we do at the MediaThon is provide a weekly roundup of media news for this blog.  We curate information about media creation, business and technology that’s useful and interesting. Here’s a quick view of the process.

When selecting material, ask yourself:

  • Is it indicative of a larger trend?
  • Is there a new and important angle?
  • What could this mean for the our community of content creators, distributors, businesspeople, technologists and others?

In writing it up:

  • Be brief, concise and pithy.
  • Pick out and quickly say the most salient details.
  • Look the for the context, or something from inside to pull out and highlight.
  • Look for the opportunity it presents! It may be a business opportunity, the possibilities for the community, or a potential personal opportunity.

I hope this helps. If you have more ideas on best practices to curate, feel free to let us know.

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