• There was reluctance from these companies to embark in a direction that would perhaps be opposed by the Bush administration. I think that’s changed. I think if anything the Obama administration has indicated to al-Jazeera that it sees us as part of the solution, not part of the problem.
• Al-Jazeera English’s head of North American strategies Tony Burman • Discussing why getting his network on U.S. cable systems has been such a hard sell. When the English-language network launched in 2006, it carried a bit of a reputation with it (despite its editorial independence and BBC-like business model), and it’s one that’s kept the network running in D.C., parts of Ohio and parts of Vermont. That’s it. (Oh, and if you happen to own a satellite dish.) This is despite the fact that the service is widely-available in Europe and Canada without any troubles. “Why in the most vibrant democracy in the world, where engagement and knowledge of the world is probably the most important,” Burman continues, “why it’s not available is one of these things that would take a PhD scholar to understand.” Meanwhile, Fox News airs unabated. source

• News organizations take note: Not only is al-Jazeera getting much attention for their coverage of the Egypt crisis, but they’re breaking a lot of ground, too. They’ve released tons of content with a Creative Commons license – video, Flickr photos and more. They’ve had a long relationship with the CC people, and this proves exactly why it’s so fruitful. Just think if the AP actually did this instead of threatening to sue everyone under the sun. source

• 78% approve of President Obama’s response to the Gabby Giffords shooting
• 53% approve of how the news media responded to the attack
• 30% approve of Sarah Palin’s response to the incident source

• You get Tennessee pride and the feeling that if there was looting here, the national media would be all over it. I think that’s unfair, but that’s the way some people view it.
• Tennessean editor Mark Silverman • Regarding the way that the mainstream media mostly glossed over a huge story – a massive flood in Nashville that killed 30 people. But why? The simple answer is that there were seemingly bigger, more nuanced stories happening that week, and a major flood seems old hat. It’s absolutely the worst way to think about it, but it seemingly couldn’t compete with terrorism (the failed Times Square bombing, where nobody died) or a slightly-more-epic disaster (the BP oil spill). The truth is, though, the story got underplayed by the usual suspects, to the point where Anderson Cooper took his crew down there later in the week and apologized for not getting down there sooner. source

• What he said about new tech In his commencement speech at Hampton University yesterday, the president threw out this gem: “With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.” He also notes that it allows false claims to quickly gain traction.
• Why we (mostly) disagree May we note that all those new ways to get information empower us to hear a huge diversity of voices? While we agree that this technology has an addictive element to it, the fact of the matter is, it empowers a diversity of voices that didn’t exist even a decade ago. And plus, Obama’s arguments could easily apply to television or radio, if you think about it. We do agree with the false claims part, though. source

• 16% of all links on the blogosphere last week were related to same-sex marriage, as many as Chile
• 0.1% of newspaper coverage focused
  on it, and instead was health-care-obsessed source

• We like the meme machines that Ben Huh’s “I Can Has Cheezburger” network provides. They’re goofy, they’re funny at times, and they often drive some pretty interesting trends online. What we don’t like, however, are his wages. What’s essentially a job in a profitable niche media industry is treated as if it’s a struggling startup. Gawker has been all over this the last few days, after Huh himself backed his company into a corner thanks to a frank admission.

What “Cheezburger” makes in revenue

• $4 million in yearly revenue off
  of user-submitted content source

The “Cheezburger” employee picture

• 30 employees work for Ben Huh’s
  cat-loving empire source

• $8.55 the starting rate (40 hr./week, no benefits) at one of Huh’s sites for an office admin or a junior designer – that’s minimum wage in Washington
• $17,784 the amount that brings home for potential employees each year, before taxes of any sort – that’s just $7,000 above the poverty line source

• » A notable wrinkle: These jobs are contract jobs without benefits starting out. Contract jobs that don’t take out taxes, just an FYI, are the ones that Joe Stack railed against when he crashed that plane into the IRS building. And while Huh claims that people move up in the company, the fact of the matter is that this is a near-poverty level job starting out.

How that compares

• $30k starting rate for an entry-level office administrator source
• $29k starting rate for a Web-based graphic designer source
• $20k starting rate for a “blogger” – so Huh is even low for that source

Can you live off that? No

• $17,784the entry-level pay (before taxes) at Cheezburger Network, with the possibility of wage increases
• $18,337the living wage (after taxes) in the Seattle area, where the network is located source

The justification for low wages

• We advertise lower wages for entry-level positions because the worst candidates focus on money the most. Believe it or not, advertising lower-than-market wages actually helped us yield better candidates.
• Cheezburger Network CEO Ben Huh • In an article discussing how a recent ad drew candidates who were upset that he was offering so little for what are in reality jobs that require a college education. While passion is one thing, it’s another thing entirely to force low wages on college-educated people. He lists three reasons why he feels employees who ask about compensation aren’t desirable. The first? “The candidate’s inability to control their personal expenses, which inevitably leads to drama and demands at work.” He goes further, noting: “If you have high financial requirements in order to absolutely survive, I don’t really know what to say than go get a job at a bank (you know what I mean).” Know what would help them control personal expenses, Ben? A living wage. Well, maybe they could get one (and health insurance!) if they worked at a Starbucks instead. source

But wait, they’re not alone

• Look, it’s easy to focus on them. But the real problem we’re starting to see with user-generated content is that nobody’s really paying enough, and preying on passion. Lots of companies are guilty of this. Examiner.com is a great example. Journalists have for years been able to make a decent, if not great, wage by working at newspapers and other print publications. Will this go away? Will we even be able to buy cheezburgers? Just a thought.

• The fundamental problem with Kouwe was that when he saw good stories elsewhere, he felt the need to re-report them himself, rather than simply linking to what he had found, as any real blogger would do as a matter of course.
• Reuters blogger Felix Salmon (who knows how to rock a pair of glasses) • Nailing the real problem with a lot of mainstream media blogs (but specifically regarding the situation of New York Times plagiarist Zachary Kouwe), which is that they’re link-phobic. Instead of having the guts to link to a story (out of fear of looking like he was behind the story), what Kouwe and other mainstream journalists do is find a story that needs to get on the blog, rewrite it and make it their own. Unfortunately for Kouwe, he left pieces of language from the other stories in his posts. Salmon puts his criticism like so: “If there’s a minor news story on a trustworthy wire service, and you think you need it on the blog, then link to it.” source

• The truth is, I feel like yelling Stop quite a bit these days. Every time I hear about Twitter I want to yell Stop. The notion of sending and getting brief updates to and from dozens or thousands of people every few minutes is an image from information hell.
• New Yorker staff writer George Packer • Complaining about the popularity of Twitter. He won’t use it because he’s scared of becoming addicted. He calls it “crack for media addicts.” He seems to not understand the appeal of the service at all. He’s a journalist – with sources who understand the need to be constantly connected – and he himself doesn’t even own a BlackBerry. Mr. Packer, stop complaining and catch up. If you want to be a journalist in this new environment, you have to catch up. source

• Everywhere I go these days, people who know what I do for a living keep asking the same question: Did you have any idea this was going on? I smile and sheepishly shake my head: No, I did not, never even a whiff.
• Washington Post golf writer Leonard Shapiro • Discussing how the golf press missed the Tiger Woods story pretty badly. Why’s that? Simply put, they rarely dealt with him off the golf course, and when they did, it was during carefully vetted 10-minute interviews. Shapiro asked his industry colleagues if they had a hint of Woods’ private life, and none of them did. Surprising, to say the least, especially since these were the guys that put Woods on a pedestal all these years. source