A Subscriber Model for your Community

A Subscriber Model for your Community

Think about what we’re willing to pay for each month. $10 to Netflix for House of Cards, $10 to Spotify for streaming music, $10 to HBO Go for Game of Thrones and True Detective. Even more important than the $360 per year for access to music, movies and TV...

Counting the Dead and then Making Coffee

Frontera List is not the most merry of mailing lists. It is administered by New Mexico State University reference librarian Molly Molloy, and aims to facilitate discussion around the violence in Ciudad Juarez that goes beyond the usual daily death count. Still, the...
Managing the River of Media

Managing the River of Media

We are all overwhelmed by too much information. Either we feel burdened by thousands of unread emails, articles, and blog posts, or we generally feel out of the information loop, as if others have secret access to content that we’re not privy to. If we...

Soft Start and Soft Power

My time off: amazing. Beyond words. Every since: a disaster. It seems that my computer just couldn’t deal with such a lack of attention. And so, mysteriously, while it wasn’t being used at all, the logic board gave out. I spent about three days...
Social Translation and the News Industry

Social Translation and the News Industry

This week I’m in Perugia, a central Italian, pre-Roman village that sits on a high bluff overlooking a sea of impossibly green pasture that is tucked in each evening by a thin blanket of sunset-tinted fog. The surrounding National Geographic-like views are a...

Changes in Media Over the Past 550 Years

Still playing a lot of catch up. Over at Global Voices I published an interview I did with Caucasus Editor Onnik Krikorian. And over at Idea Lab I published a text version of my talk at Media Camp Kyiv. Teaser: Before movable type, Europeans depended on priests to...

The New Era of Media Development

Update: I’ve decided to publish this one over at Idea Lab instead. Below is a teaser. Media development as a field within international development has existed for at least 30 years. Broadly speaking, media development organizations provide financial support,...
On Crowdsourcing Country Branding

On Crowdsourcing Country Branding

My time in South Africa, sadly, came to an end a couple days ago. It was the most fun I’ve had in a long, long while. And I met some new friends on the We Blog the World tour who I hope will soon enough become old friends. Depending on how you count, this was my...
Rebuilding Liberia's Media

Rebuilding Liberia's Media

How do you rebuild a country from scratch? First you need a government. Liberia, so far, has that under the leadership of President Ellen “Irony Lady” Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first elected female head of state. Second, especially in the case of a...