a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

What to Watch (or not) in 2007

It’s been a year of navel-gazing for journalists. As William Powers recently noted in National Journal, “These days, almost everything in the media seems to be about the media”–and 2007 is shaping up to be another year of upheaval and overload. So what should we be keeping an eye on other than our collective bellybuttons? Here’s a quick roundup.

Feeling masochistic? Then tune into Fox News Channel’s forthcoming “Daily Show” knockoff. As yet untitled, the pilot show is being produced by the co-creator of “24,” and co-hosted by comedians Kurt Long (late of the Sci Fi Channel’s “Scare Tactics”) and Susan Yeagley (most recently featured in VH1’s “Best Week Ever” series).

But take heart: A new option for frustrated news-lovers may soon be available: The Real News, a viewer-funded, 24-7 progressive online news channel. Find out more at www.iwtnews.com.

Yet such alternatives may be short-lived if the telecom industry has anything to say about it: it’s been lobbying Congress nonstop for the right to charge Web site proprietors extra to use their proposed high-speed lines. Tune into the issue by visiting www.savetheinternet.com. With the defeat of HR5252, the net neutrality fight will heat up again as the new Congress goes into session. A free and open Internet is the best chance for original and independent programming to flourish, but as Jeannine Kenney, senior policy analyst at Consumers Union, warns, “Industry will be back with their money and phony grassroots groups.”

Bored at the box office? Take a gander at the Media that Matters Film Festival, www.mediathatmattersfest.org, a juried online showcase of short films on diverse topics that “spark debate and action in 8 minutes or less.” Selections from the most recent festival include shorts on Congolese women’s reproductive health fights, a battle over the rising cost of water in Michigan, and the importance of asparagus, among others.

Or maybe this is the year to step down your media consumption and make some news of your own: digital audio and video gadgets are getting cheaper and better by the month. Check out www.newassignment.net for the latest scoop on innovations in citizen journalism.

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

The Best of the Ethnic Media

Forget about the Pulitzer Prize. On Nov. 14, the most recent addition to the world of journalism awards ignored old standards like the New York Times and the Washington Post, instead honoring the work of such reporters as Dennis Romero of Tu Ciudad in Los Angeles and Ray Hanania of Ynet-News.com/Yedioth Ahronoth in Orland Park, Ill.

Romero and Hanania are two of the 19 winners from New America Media’s (NAM) first National Ethnic Media Awards. NAM is the country’s first and largest national network of ethnic news organizations and runs its own newswire service, funneling content to and from its 700 media partners. According to NAM, there are more than 2,500 ethnic media outlets across the country, from newspapers to TV broadcasts.

The NAM award winners reflected the diversity of these media outlets, honoring reporters who work for print publications like the Nguoi Viet Daily News and Little India and broadcast outlets like New Tang Dynasty TV.

“Hurricane Katrina and immigration rights dominated news in ethnic media over the last year,” says awards coordinator Sandip Roy. “Each of these complex stories reflects ethnic media’s unique role as an advocacy voice, as well as a vital source of news and information for their audiences.”

Joining the awards ceremony was Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.). The cynical might suspect that it was more than the great reporting that brought the Senator to the event.

As the Nov. 4 Washington Post reported, “While general-market newspapers and broadcast networks are profitable, their well-heeled audience is steadily shrinking. These ethnic media– whose readers, viewers and listeners are often recent immigrants of lower income and limited interest to advertisers– say their current worth may be small but their potential is immense.”

And NAM knows it. The next day, the organization held its first national professional development seminar, including a training session on “The Future of the Ethnic Vote in American Politics.”

a short monthly column on media and politics that Tracy and I coauthored for In These Times:

The Two Faces of Keith Olbermann

“The leading terrorist group in this world right now is al-Qaeda,” says MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, “but the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party.”

Olbermann is on a roll, delivering a series of “Special Comments” that have hoisted ratings for his cable news show “Countdown” by nearly 70 percent since late August. The cable news host has certainly raised the stakes with these commentaries, which break sharply from the quick-change routines of typical cable news. No tickers or blinking graphics distract viewers from Olbermann’s impassioned and hard-hitting anti-Bush regime diatribes, delivered head-on into the camera.

Viewers are hooked: tens of thousands have watched the commentaries on YouTube. An October 8 LA Times article notes that “Olbermann has become a hero to Bush opponents.” And yet a number of female commentators aren’t as enamored of the self-aggrandizing host. Take his reporting on a recent celebrity dust-up; the tagline for the segment: “A Slut and Battery.”

“Keith Olbermann stays classy by reporting that Paris Hilton has ‘had worse things happen to her face’ than being punched,” blogs Jessica Valenti of Feministing. com on October 11. “And you know exactly what he means.”

Rebecca Traister, a columnist for Salon.com’s “Broadsheet,” put it this way via e-mail: “I don’t like Paris Hilton any more than the next sentient human, but Olbermann’s segment on her was depressing, mostly because it demonstrated that trashing women for being sexual is still OK no matter what your professional or journalistic sensibilities are supposed to be. It was low, it was offensive, and it was pathetic.”

This latest gaffe piles on to a mountain of other insulting references the host has made to women. He seems to have it in for blondes in particular, calling colleague Rita Cosby “dumber than a suitcase of rocks,” and smashing an Ann Coulter doll to pieces on air.

Now, we are not making the argument that Ann Coulter is a decent human being. But Olbermann, given the high standards you’re setting for others, we expect more from you.