kerkko.fi

http://finrosforum.fi/asylum-for-elena-maglevannaya

An Israeli journalist has been held secretly under house arrest for months amid allegations she obtained and leaked classified military information to an Israeli newspaper. Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service has banned news media from mentioning the case or identifying the reporter, Anat Kam, 23, who former colleagues say worked for the Israeli news site Walla! until her arrest in December 2009.

Prosecutors claim she copied at least two classified military documents during her mandatory army service years earlier. These two documents are believed to have inspired a 2008 investigation by Haaretz reporter Uri Blau into how the Israeli military has repeatedly violated a 2006 ruling by the High Court of Justice against "targeted assassinations," predominantly those in which a non-combatant was killed.

The Israeli newspaper, Ma'ariv, has published ambiguous references to the case. One came in a January op-ed about a non-existent country that secretly jails journalists, asking its confused subscribers whether that country should still be considered a democracy. Cracks in the gag order's effectiveness began to appear this spring, when Israeli journalists leaked the news to bloggers.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=272097

Demand Media is a content-provider start-up that has quickly become the web's least understood and most vilified juggernaut. The company has come up with a ruthlessly efficient way to churn out stories it knows will be profitable online. The topics may seem bizarre, but the method, though controversial, is unquestionably a success.

Demand Media runs a slew of popular internet portals, including eHow.com, Cracked.com and Livestrong.com that receive 100 million hits a month. The company, based in Santa Monica, is also directing an army of freelancers to write stories that appear in traditional media outlets. More deals with large off-line brands will be announced soon.

Demand Media has a horde of more than 7,000 freelancers. One person takes the algorithm's output and turns it into a headline; another writes the article and passes it on to a copy editor, who does fact-checking and fiddles with grammar. All told, it may take less than a day for a short article to get posted and start earning ad revenue.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1971409,00.html

A study of ten mainstream newspapers in Australia found that nearly 55% of stories were driven by some form of public relations. The Daily Telegraph came out on top of the league ladder with 70% of stories triggered by PR entities. The Sydney Morning Herald had 42% PR-driven stories in the period.

Many journalists and editors were defensive when asked about the results. Who would blame them? They are busier than ever, under resourced, on deadline, and under pressure. Most refused to respond, others asked for their comments to be withdrawn out of fear they would be reprimanded or fired.

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/03/15/over-half-your-news-is-spin/

In fighting for science, we subscribe to a comforting illusion: that people can be swayed by the facts. The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Telegraph columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as "white-coated prima donnas and narcissists, pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks. The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more."

Views like this can be explained partly as the revenge of the humanities students. There is scarcely an editor or executive in any major media company -- and precious few journalists -- with a science degree, yet everyone knows that the anoraks are taking over the world. But the problem is compounded by complexity. Arthur C Clarke remarked that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." He might have added that any sufficiently advanced expertise is indistinguishable from gobbledegook.

Scientific specialisation is now so extreme that even people studying neighbouring subjects within the same discipline can no longer understand each other. The detail of modern science is incomprehensible to almost everyone; we have to take what scientists say on trust. Yet science tells us to trust nothing; to believe only what can be demonstrated. This contradiction is fatal to public confidence. The problem is not only that most scientists can speak no recognisable human language, but also the expectation that people are amenable to persuasion.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/03/08/the-unpersuadables/

One reason seekers of news are abandoning print newspapers for the internet has nothing directly to do with technology. It is that newspaper articles are too long. On the internet, news articles get to the point. Newspaper writing, by contrast, is encrusted with conventions that do not add to your understanding of the news. Newspaper writers are not to blame. These conventions are traditional, even mandatory.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/201001/short-writing

"Der gegenwärtige Medienumbruch hat die Wucht eines Paradigmenwechsels, an dessen Ende ein neues Weltverständnis steht. Im Kern sind es Veränderungen in den Teilsystemen der Filterung und Finanzierung, die eine Neujustierung des gesamten Medienapparates erforderlich machen," schreibt Martin Oetting.

Die Finanzierungslogik hat bisher darauf basiert, dass mediale Verbreitung knapp ist. Im Journalismus wurde nicht reich, wer gut schreiben oder recherchieren konnte. Reich wurde, wer die Druckerpresse oder den Sender kontrolliert hat und damit auch die Werbeeinnahmen. Das ist mittelfristig vorbei.

Wenn im Internet noch Werbung geschaltet wird, dann ist sie in jedem Fall billiger, denn was nicht knapp ist, kann nicht viel kosten. Wer diesen Umstand verkennt und diffus die Gesellschaft auffordert, Lösungen zu finden, die den Status Quo bewahren helfen, hat offenbar nicht begriffen, dass es gerade keine automatische ursächliche Verbindung zwischen Unternehmerinteressen und einem funktionierenden Journalismus gibt.

Das Filtern verlagert sich von wenigen zu vielen und von Gatekeepern hin zu stärker maschinell, kollaborativ oder von beidem geprägten Filtersystemen. Es ist schwer vorstellbar, dass diese Bewegung wieder umgekehrt werden kann. Forderungen an die Politik, wonach den alten Filtersystemen auch wieder ihre alte Bedeutung zukommen müsse, sind nur schlecht begründbar.

In ihrer bestehenden Form wird unsere Medienlandschaft nicht weiter existieren. Sie kann es nicht, bei einem derart radikalen Bruch, der ihr die fundamentale ökonomische Grundlage entzieht. Das ist keine düstere Prophezeiung, es ist eine Gewissheit. Offen ist allein, wie lange es dauert. Dieser Text ist daher auch keine Utopie oder Brandrede, sondern nichts als ein weiterer Versuch, das Unvermeidbare zu verstehen.

Thomas Kuhn hat erklärt, dass die Welten vor und nach einem Paradigmenwechsel "inkommensurabel" seien. Mit anderen Worten: so unterschiedlich, so anders, dass es kaum noch möglich ist, sie überhaupt zu vergleichen. Geschweige denn, die Rezepte aus der alten in der neuen Welt anzuwenden.

http://carta.info/18043/kommunikationswandel-die-vier-subsysteme-des-medienapparats/