Mutually Inclusive PR

Northern Voice Blogging Conference Highlights

Michael Tippett: Digg.com is an example of how the audience is influencing the news - readers vote on which stories should have most prominence. Their traffic is now bigger than NBC or CNN.

Nancy White:  The online world calls for new competencies. We operate in an electronic world, where our body language and our ability to sense body language don't help us. We need new skills of communication, facilitation, learning, tolerance for ambiguity. We need to be self aware before we can be effective telling stories and understanding others.

Robert Ouimet: The popularization of portable transistor radios was a transformative moment. In a similar way, blogging and MP3 players are changing the way content is consumed. The media relies on an audience. Media fragmentation scares the crap out of media companies. CBC Radio 3 is a response to these trends. It's a web site where people can send in their music. It's posted to the Net, was until recently the most popular podcast in Canada, and is broadcast on Sirius satellite radio.

David Sifry: The extremely popular bloggers have become more like mainstream media. For example, Instapundit and Boing Boing can’t handle comments. There’s about 115,000 people who are in the magic middle - 30 to 1,000 people link to them.  These are people who are influential or authoritative in areas that you might consider more niche.  These poeple become local authorities as opposed to the big broadcast voice. The amount of traffic these poeple see is manageable enough that they can continue to have real conversations.

Robert Scoble:  Google Juice doesn't care about "interesting". It cares about links.

Mark Schneider: Journalism's reputation is battered by credibility problems and complaints of bias. Best practices of mainstream journalism: Have an open mind; Try to avoid errors and mistakes; Corroborate with other sources; Maintain personal integrity; Rigorously chase the story.   

Tags: northernvoice media blogs northernvoice2006

Anonymous CBC Columnist Unmasked

The anonymous "Campaign Confidential" election columnist featured on CBC's The National and on its web site has been revealed: Rick Anderson.

Wow. The suspense was killing me.

Who the hell is Rick Anderson? "A former campaign director for the Reform                           Party."

How many of the anonymous columns did I watch? Just one.

Was it worth waiting to find out the thrilling conclusion to this mystery?

Zzzzzzz.

Oops, sorry, I dozed off there for a minute.

Previous post:

Anonymous Blogger Bounty: I'll Pitch in $20

CBC, Bloggers Accused of Election Day Leaks

In a "he-said, she-said" debate, CBC's blog report accused some Canadian foreign blogs of violating the Elections Act by announcing election results while polls were still open, while bloggers accused the CBC of doing just that on its international service.

Podcasters Meetup - Small but Worth It

  Tod Maffin Podcasters Meetup Regina 2006 
  Originally uploaded by Mutually Inclusive.

I guess there isn't a burgeoning community of podcasters in Regina, or they didn't see the promos. Either way, a small group of us got together Tuesday night with technology journalist, futurist and podcaster/blogger Tod Maffin to throw some ideas around.

It was great to meet Tod in person after watching his career from afar for several years.

Aside from all the CBC folks who came to the meetup, Michael Bell talked about a project he's doing with the University of Regina journalism school on podcasting. I'll keep an eye on his blog to see how that develops.

I'm still not sure I want to podcast for myself, but I can see some cool possibilities for organizations that would allow public service announcements in a series of short shows. The key would be to make sure there's enough value in the content to attract subscribers.  Boring audio is just as boring when you put it into a podcast format.

For more about Maffin, see the CBC category on my blog, or visit his I Love Radio blog, Radio Freelancing, or his Todbits technology blog.

Anonymous Blogger Bounty - I'll Pitch in $20

Latest Update: CBC reveals the identify of its mystery columnist January 25.

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CBC continues to act as if their use of an anoymous election commentator is edgy.

Nope. It's just annoying. So media columnist Antonia Zerbisias and the Hacks and Wonks blog have ponied up $50 and $20 respectively for the first person to reveal the identity of the Campaign Confidential anoymous blogger (prior to the election day unveiling).

No takers yet. Maybe $70 isn't enough to get someone to betray their comrade's trust. I'll pitch in $20, to bring the grand total to $90.

(Update: Just checked the bank account, and I think I can handle $10 in Canadian Tire money, all our beer empties and a coupon for Domino's Pizza. That's the equivalent of $20, anyway!)

I can understand why a personal blogger might stay anonymous, but a paid columnist for a national news organization? Doesn't work for me, or for Fine Young Journalist (who is aware of the irony that he anonymously criticizes an anonymous blogger).

Update Again: Okay, maybe calling the mystery commentator a blogger is going a bit far, but it's hard to categorize someone who writes a script for TV, but has an actor read it, then posts the text online.

Previous Canadian Election 2006 posts:

Blogging the Canadian Election

Blogging the Canadian Election

Canadian bloggers are covering the election campaign from their various partisan and non-partisan perspectives. (New links added as I find them.)

Mainstream Media
CBC - John Bowman covers election blogging
Globe and Mail - Dan Cook blogs on election coverage and Overheard on the Trail
CTV - Numerous CTV bloggers contribute
Canwest - (hint to Canwest: learn how to aggregate headlines on one page, and supply a feed)

Official Party Blogs
Conservatives
Liberals  (French version)
New Democrats (Hmm. No blog, but news releases are available by RSS feed)
Bloc Quebecois

Partisans
Blogging Tories
Blogging Dippers (NDP) / Progressive Bloggers
Liberal Bloggers
Bloc Blogs (if you have a link, send by e-mail or add a comment)
Green Bloggers

Observers

Blogs Canada List of Political Blogs (not comprehensive)
Peter's Politics - aggregation of election postings
Marc Snyder - bilingual postings, including daily election analysis
Angus Reid Consultants - analysis

- - -

Thanks to Robert McClelland and others for some extra links.

Small Dead Animals responds to a clueless media report that suggests blogs will have no impact on the election, and "People are not coming home from work at night and deciding they have to read 10 or 12 blogs before dinner in the same way they may read the newspaper or sit down to watch the news." The blog's readers chime in to counter the suggestion that only young male geeks read blogs. (142 comments from readers)

Zerbisias on election blogs: "Are the MSM handling the blogosphere with inteliigence and fairness during this campaign? Or are they clueless?" (15 comments from readers)

BlogPulse results show that Canadian political blog postings spiked upward last week.

Photo Proves Tod Is Audio Pioneer

Futurist, blogger and podcaster Tod Maffin has been at the forefront of many geek trends, but I never realized what a pioneer he truly was. Close examination of a photo on Maffin's I Love Radio blog proves that he was with radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi on the historic day of the first transatlantic radio transmission.

See the photo, taken in St. John's Newfoundland (that's Tod on the left).

For more on Tod's cross-country pod meet-up odyssey, check out his site.

CBC to Add Satellite and Blog

Tod Maffin writes that CBC's foray into satellite radio programming will include a beefed up Radio  3, with an emphasis on Canadian musicians, starting in early December.

As for the web side of things:

"A comprehensive new website will bring together Radio 3’s existing web properties (including newmusiccanada.com, rootsmusiccanada.com, and justconcerts.com), and will feature a CBC Radio 3 blog, as well as an interactive music player that will offer pre-arranged playlists and will allow listeners to customize their own.  Radio 3’s weekly, all-Canadian music podcast – the most popular in the country with more than 650,000 downloads to date – will also continue."

The Radio 3 channel will play 24 hours a day, which Maffin says means lots of opportunities for established and upcoming Canadian musicians to get some play.

CBC is in partnership with Sirius Canada, making up a large part of the Canadian content. There will be 100 stations available by satellite, with 10 of them being Canadian. See November 2 news release.
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Nicest Guy on Radio Surfaces in N. Carolina

I used to really enjoy days on CBC's national morning show This Morning when Dick Gordon was the guest host.

He managed to bring civility to the role of asking questions that people don't necessarily want to be asked.

I knew he had joined National Public Radio and was doing a national show, but sort of lost touch until I saw this item about a new show he's working on in the North Carolina area for the local NPR station WUNC, after his national interview show got cancelled. See also the WUNC news release announcing Gordon's pending show.

The plan is to put the resources into developing a strong show, and attract fees from NPR stations across the country that decide to air the show. Gordon expects to get out of the studio for some field reporting in this new venture.

I guess this answers Peter Rukavina's question: Perhaps Dick Gordon will come back to Canada?

Update:  All the English usage sticklers out there will laugh when I say "the morning show This morning" and I describe his show on National Public Radio as "national". Sounds like unnecessary repetition, but there are plenty of NPR shows that aren't national. NPR is more like an affiliation of many local stations that share content. I don't pretend to understand all the details, but suffice it to say shows are only truly national once a critical mass of local stations pick them up.

O'Reilly on Ads - Straight Goods

Update:  O'Reilly on Advertising has finished its run on CBC Radio. No word on future episodes or reruns, but look to the summer schedule for possible rebroadcasts.

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Terry O'Reilly continues his excellent commentary on the advertising scene, Saturday mornings at 11:30 on CBC Radio One (don't believe the show listings on CBC's site that say it's still running on Monday nights).

Some responses to his 30-minute show O'Reilly on Advertising, which runs to December:

Pirate Terry O'Reilly - Immutably Me, by Paula Pace

"(One) show taught me that, in Canada, a beer ad cannot depict anyone holding a beer above shoulder height or it may send the wrong message that they’re having too much fun. Beer causes fun?? Who knew?"

Adam on Advertising - Adam's World, by Adam Gerhard

"According or O'Reilly there are 2 really important things to realize about branding:

1. our brain does this all the time whether we like it or not
2. once we brand something it is *very* difficult to change"

What I like best about the show is the straightforward, conversational approach O'Reilly takes, even when he's delving into a complex subject. When forced to use jargon, he either helps the listener by explaining it, or he puts it in context, so you get the general idea.

Also worth listening to (and viewing) are some of the Spot of the Week items on Pirate Radio and Television's web site. You'll notice a clean, ungussied-up style to the writing and production. O'Reilly's a writer/director with Pirate. Scroll down to "Range Rover" and "Jerry Seinfeld Trailer - Comedian" for some laughs.

Previous post:

CBC Show Looks at Advertising