Sep 6th, 2007
by Dan Gillmor.
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CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo interviewed Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide, the huge mortgage and financial company whose stock has been taking a beating as the housing bubble has started to deflate. He’s been selling enormous amounts of stock in the last year, making about $129 million, or about a third of the $406 million he’s collected by selling stock he got as a gift from the company over the years. (Not to mention his $20 million in other pay last year…)
Bartiromo asked him about his stock sales, and here’s part of his answer:
The reason I’m selling is that it is the majority of my net worth, and I have a big family, nine grandchildren, five children, I have a lot of education to pay for, but–so I have a lot of obligations, but I am sort of at the end of my career, not at the beginning of my career.
Those grandkids must be planning to go to incredibly expensive schools.
Jeff Hawkins and I still believe that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential. When we do Foleo II it will be based on our new platform, and we think it will deliver on the promise of this new category. We’re not going to speculate now on timing for a next Foleo, we just know we need to get our core platform and smartphones done first.
Be sure to read the comments, which combine disappointment and relief with understanding.
The St. Petersburg Times and its corporate cousin Congressional Quarterly are going to test politicians’ statements for, um, truth.
So in a move rare for a news organization, we’re dedicating a team of reporters and researchers to meticulously examine the rhetoric of candidates and their partisans, and then make a call: Is the claim true or not? You might think such work would be standard journalistic fare. But many news organizations can spend less money and get less grief if their political reporting sticks to stenography and puffery.
This project could use some help — from the audience. But the publications are going it alone, preferring to do it the old-fashioned way. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but imagine what they could do with thousands of eyes, not a few, on the subject.
UPDATE: It turns out that there’s interest from the publications in getting audience participation, based on the comment discussion on Matt Waite’s blog (he’s a developer of this project). Let’s see what happens.
This fall and winter I plan to hold some workshop/unconferences on citizen media, looking at several key issues in the arena including trust and techniques. I’ll have more to say on these soon.
I’ve been testing the Nokia E90 Communicator, an powerful blend of hardware and software. It combines a number of functions into a portable computer/phone that, despite the inevitable compromises, strikes me as the best device for journalists — and lots of other business folks — to carry around with them.
It’s almost precisely what the Apple iPhone is not: a device designed with serious work in mind, where the keypad(s) are the data-entry systems and where multimedia creation carries a higher value than playback. There’s a fold-out keyboard and large, high-resolution screen. It still requires thumb-typing (making me suspect that Nokia could and should create a model of this that’s shorter and no less difficult for typing).
The communications array is astounding, as we’ve come to expect from Nokia lately: 4-band GSM, GPRS, HSDPA 3G, WiFi and more. The 3.2-megapixel camera takes more than good enough pictures, and the video and audio recording are more than acceptable. GPS is built-in (but the radio receiver isn’t very powerful), along with a variety of other excellent features. Web browsing is better than ever with the larger 800×352 inside screen.Video playback still lags behind the iPhone, but not by much — I ripped some TV episodes to the E90 and watched them on a plane with excellent results.
The main drawback is the size and weight, though it’s svelte compared to older models of the Communicator series. Storage is limited to 4GB with a (extra purchase) micro-SD card. Another, continuing Nokia blind spot — true for all its phones — is the company’s refusal to support the Macintosh except in fairly crude ways (including the serious problem of requiring a Windows PC to update the firmware).
The N95 has more sophisticated multimedia features, and upcoming 8GB model looks pretty terrific (a touch screen would make it nearly perfect apart from the lack of QWERTY keyboard). I may stick with the N95, but I’m torn, because I love the ability to do more serious work on the E90.
This device, not yet officially on sale in the U.S., has game-changing potential for journalism. If I ran a newsroom and could talk the money folks into it, I’d hand out E90s to some of my journalists and Web developers. I’d tell them to experiment like crazy, and to watch what other people are doing with these and other powerful mobile systems. I suspect they’d do some amazing things.
San Jose Mercury News: CBS feels bite of `Kid Nation’ controversy. Throwing even more fuel on the fire: the agreement signed by the parents of the kids and the production company, a copy of which was obtained by the New York Times. In the contract – a standard one used by most reality shows – the parents (who could not visit their kids during filming) essentially signed away the children’s rights, absolving Forman’s company and CBS from any responsibility for injuries, working conditions or unsafe housing. There was also a clause covering “emotional distress, illness, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and pregnancy.” And if the parents complained to the press, they were subject to a $5 million penalty under a confidentiality agreement.
In defending itself, the network had to admit that the kids were surrounded by hundreds of adults: producers, camera operators, paramedics, cooks, psychologists. Any illusion that the kids were on their own disappears and “Kid Nation” looks like any other reality show in which producers create scenarios and even feed lines to those involved.
You have to wonder what kind of people would a) write such a contract and b) sign it. And you have to wonder what kind of people turn to this garbage for their entertainment.
The biggest scam is that the industry gets away will calling them reality shows — as if they were filming documentaries. CBS is no different from the other companies, but it was the crown jewel of television news. Once it produced “Harvest of Shame,” telling the real stories of migrant workers. Now it produces “Kid Nation,” claiming reality but offering the sleaziest fiction.
Couldn’t reporters who write about TV at least stop using the word “reality” in this context? Or are they as helpless in the face of propaganda as the majority of Washington reporters who continue serve as stenographers to the powerful?
Guardian: Google News to publish agencies’ copy. The announcement that Google is to publish news content on its own site is likely to be met with some concern from the news industry, which has struggled to work out whether the web giant’s activities across video, advertising and book publishing are a threat or an opportunity.Google News business product manager Josh Cohen rejected the idea that the move would worry publishers.”The flip side is that there will be more room on Google News for more of their original content, which will be pushed higher up the results.“
The most interesting part of this deal is that the Associated Press is one of Google’s news providers. Yet the AP is owned by the news organizations.
For some time now, it’s been clear that the interests of AP and its members have been diverging. This is the clearest evidence yet.
Meanwhile, the deal is another proof that Google’s insistence of non-competition with news organizations is utter garbage, and has been for some time.
Just in case anyone was wondering what I do when I teach at Berkeley, here’s this fall’s class syllabus. It’s a lot of fun to work with Bill Gannon, my co-instructor, and with the superb students at Berkeley.
Viacom is claiming that I have violated their copyright by posting on YouTube a segment from it’s VH1 show Web Junk 2.0… which VH1 produced – without permission – from a video that I had originally created. Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!
This looks, if the facts are as Knight represents, like the standard, arrogant big-media goof in the copyright war — issuing takedown notices that have been poorly researched. It seems reasonable to assume that Viacom will recognize this and back down, especially now that the case is going to get wide publicity. Then again, the entertainment industry is not exactly known for listening to reason.
And when the weight of big corporations is thrown against the little guy, the rule seems to be guilty until proved innocent. And the cost of proving innocence is high. This imbalance cries out for more effective countermeasures to abuse.
There are penalties in copyright law for using takedown notices frivolously (again, this may not be that specific situation). Perhaps this is the kind of case the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) might want to take up. The organization took Diebold, a maker of defective voting machines, to court several years ago for knowingly misrepresenting copyright infringement, and won a judgement against the company.
Slightly off-topic: Does Knight’s use of Star Wars imagery in his video have any trademark implications?
