Welcome to the Free Press blog! We post several times a week on everything from Internet access to free speech to media mergers, so check back often to see what we’re up to.
The Wall Street
Journal’s AllthingsD blog just posted an interview with Carrier IQ CEO
Larry Lenhart and VP of Marketing Andrew Coward in which the two execs attempt
to come clean about just what the heck Carrier
IQ is doing with our sensitive mobile information.
There is breaking news out of New York City today. The New
York Police Department has announced that it is halting its crackdown on Elmo.
Journalists, on the other hand, are out of luck.
Maybe we’ve been looking for models in all the wrong places. To find the elusive secret to making Web journalism sustainable in community after community, maybe we need to take a peek behind the curtain into the secret sector of the economy.
If you aren't familiar with SOPA — the House's "Stop Online Piracy Act" or its companion in the Senate (called PIPA or Protect IP) — you should be. This is legislation that would allow the U.S. government to require Internet Service Providers block websites without due process.
Media conglomerates continue to squeeze
the life out of radio, and the Federal Communications Commission continues
to facilitate the slow death.
The New York Times recently reported that media giants Clear
Channel and Cumulus Media are forming
a “daily deal” alliance to compete with sites like
Groupon and LivingSocial. Clear Channel will run ads for Sweetjack, Cumulus’
daily-deals program, meaning radio personalities from both companies will
endorse the business discounts in corresponding markets. In exchange, Clear Channel gets to add Cumulus’ radio stations to its
iHeartRadio online listening service.
Yesterday I was as close to Ryan Seacrest as I'll
probably ever get. I was quoted
in a story in the New York Times
about rumors Seacrest might succeed Matt Lauer as host of Today on NBC. The celebrity beat is not my normal bailiwick, but
the Seacrest story raises some serious questions about Comcast's commitment to
news.
A year ago, when Comcast was pushing through its
multibillion-dollar mega-merger with NBC (with an assist from future
in-house lobbyist Meredith Attwell Baker), the company promised that it
wouldn't interfere with the news operations. It didn't say anything about possibly
abandoning them altogether.
After 10 journalists were arrested during the Nov. 15 NYPD raid on
Occupy Wall Street, there was a flood of attention focused on press freedom
issues. Articles were written, meetings were held and about a week later the
NYPD issued a formal order telling its officers to stop
interfering with the press. It felt like real momentum.
A letter
to the editor of the New York Times from Verizon Chairman Ivan
Seidenberg had us scratching our heads at Free Press today.
Seidenberg wrote to rebut
an Op-Ed written by former White House technology adviser Susan
Crawford, in which she states that the United States high-speed Internet
marketplace suffers from a lack of competition, a problem that drives up
broadband prices for American Internet users.
The Federal Communications Commission is still mulling
proposed changes to the rules that protect the public from media monopolies.
But reports that the agency is considering handouts to broadcasters have compelled dozens of organizations to remind the FCC that its policies must benefit the public.
