Month: February 2019

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Job Outlook for Journalists

The job outlook for journalists has been rather depressing lately with recent layoffs at major newspapers and news websites such as Buzzfeed and Vice. But a new report in Recode, using data from LinkedIn, suggests it may depend on how you define a journalists.

Using more expansive definitions of journalism, the data suggest that job titles have morphed in such a way that the journalism skill set is sometimes applied in the service of jobs that fall outside of traditional journalistic categories.

According to the Recode article, “LinkedIn’s data includes anyone whose title was journalist — or a wide range of related titles like newsletter editor, news director, reporter — regardless of where they work. Common skills emerging among these journalists include data analysis, digital marketing, and Adobe Premiere and Illustrator.”

While the outlook is still uncertain, being nimble and willing to work in new and emerging markets using a flexible skillset may be the difference between finding your passion and making passion fruit smoothies at Starbucks.

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Billionaire Sex Scandal: “Enquiring” Minds Want to Know

Jeff Bezos owns Amazon and the Washington Post newspaper (aka the WaPo). The amazing success of the first company allowed Bezos to buy the second one. But all is not rainbows and unicorns for the richest man in the world. Bezos is divorcing his wife of 25 years after engaging in an illicit affair with Lauren Sanchez, a TV news reporter. But wait, there’s more…

NEW YORK, NY – FEBRUARY 08: The New York Post with a headline referring to Jeff Bezos is photographed at a convenience store on February 8, 2019 in New York City. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon is accusing David J. Pecker, publisher of National Enquirer, the nations leading supermarket tabloid, of extortion and blackmail. (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Pictures and text messages from the affair were leaked to the National Enquirer, whose CEO, David Pecker, is a long-time friend of President Trump. In case you didn’t know, there is no love lost between the President and Bezos, largely because of the critical coverage of the Trump Presidency by the WaPo.

Now AMI, parent company of the National Enquirer, is being accused by Bezos of blackmail and extortion for threatening to release more lurid photos unless Bezos backed off from going after AMI. If this isn’t all strange enough, there’s even speculation that Sanchez’s brother may have been the one who leaked the photos.

Tabloid newspapers found in supermarket checkout aisles have always trafficked in sensational and unseemly “news” especially those stories involving celebrities, money, and sex…and this story has it all. Add a little political intrigue with the Trump connection and you have a perfect fire-storm of scandalous gossip masquerading as journalism.

This may not be the kind of journalism that the Founding Fathers wanted to protect when they wrote the First Amendment, but it still benefits from its protections. Media history buffs may recall James Thomson Callender, a scandalmonger whose attacks on our earliest Presidents led to the Sedition Act. According to the Digital History website, “Attacked by his critics as a ‘traitorous and truculent scoundrel,’ Callender defended himself on strikingly modern grounds: that the public had a right to know the moral character of people it elected to public office. Although he has often been dismissed as a ‘pen for hire,’ willing to defame anyone, Callender was much more important than that. His life underscored one of the most radical consequences of the American Revolution. The Revolution ensured that ordinary Americans would be the ultimate arbiters of American politics.”

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Fyre Festival Torch Job

I once knew an old fire chief and he used to describe arson as, “a New York torch job”…no matter where it happened. Arson, as you well know, is a crime committed to defraud an insurance company and make off with the cash. Of course insurance companies and law enforcement are pretty good at sniffing out circumstances when arson is likely to have occurred, and when they do the guy playing with fire is the one who gets burned.

According to Wikipedia, the Fyre Festival was “a failed ‘luxury music festival’ founded by Billy McFarland, CEO of Fyre Media Inc, and rapper Ja Rule. It was created with the intent of promoting the company’s Fyre app for booking music talent.”

Here’s the promo video…

Slick promotional video

Two documentaries (one from Hulu and the other from Netflix) were released a couple of weeks ago. According to The New Republic website, “Both documentaries purport to tell the ‘real’ story behind the Fyre Festival debacle of 2017, in which the charlatan Billy McFarland ripped off customers who had bought into an Instagram-fueled dream of partying with supermodels in the Bahamas. The dream never materialized—instead of champagne and concerts and luxury villas, ticket-holders encountered FEMA tents, empty beaches, and a transportation crisis. McFarland left behind a trail of unpaid debts, notably to the residents of Great Exuma itself, and ended up in jail for wire fraud.”

But this is where things really get interesting. According to The New Republic, the Netflix version of the story may be an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of the festival’s much maligned promoter. The full article is worth the read and contains fascinating information about how this scam materialized. For example, Kendall Jenner was paid $250,000 for one Instagram tweet promoting the festival. As MCCNM student Monique Cousin observed, “it was Instagram that created the buzz for the festival, and one tweet of a cheese sandwich that brought it down.”

The infamous cheese sandwich pic

The article concludes with this caution…”Fyre Festival is a story about insidious digital marketing, corporate irresponsibility, and the misdeeds of a handful of men who control the images that appear on your social media and shape your opinions.”

The event billed as “the cultural experience of the decade” turns out to be just another warning of eminent danger ahead for those who can’t read the signs of the times.

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Grammy Time

The 2019 Grammy Awards will air this Sunday, Feb 10, on CBS. The three and one-half hour program will host a range of live performers including: Cardi B, Monáe, Camila Cabello, Brandi Carlile, Miley Cyrus, Dan + Shay, H.E.R., Little Big Town, Post Malone, Ricky Martin, Shawn Mendes, Maren Morris, Kacey Musgraves, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Diana Ross, Chloe x Halle, Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, Travis Scott, Dua Lipa and St. Vincent, and Yolanda Adams, Fantasia and Andra Day. Alicia Keys will have the honor of hosting the show so don’t expect as many laugh-lines as we got from James Corden last year.

The four biggest award categories: album of the year, song of the year, record of the year and best new artist, each have 8 nominees so the list of nominees is long and fairly diverse.

Winners are determined by an online vote by members of the recording academy. According to Vox, there are four ways to become eligible to vote for Grammy winners:

  1. Have been credited with 12 physical or digital tracks released online only and currently available for purchase, with at least one track in the past five years
  2. Have six credits on commercially released tracks currently available for sale and distributed through physical distribution outlets (such as record stores), with at least one track in the past five years
  3. Have won a Grammy before
  4. Get an endorsement from a current voting member

You can find out more about the voting process here. According to the Academy, the awards honor “artistic achievement, technical proficiency and overall excellence in the recording industry, without regard to album sales or chart position.”

UPDATE: Just discovered that Grammy Awards have a connection to Colorado. Check it out!

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Microsoft’s Super Bowl Spot for the Win!

The “not-so-Super” Bowl is a fading memory, but the Microsoft spot for its adaptive controller was a home run (pardon the mixed metaphor).

https://youtu.be/_YISTzpLXCY

The spot’s title is We All Win, and indeed we do when we use technology to minimize the differences that might otherwise hold us back. Great spot Microsoft…and a great lesson for us all to remember as we struggle to keep technology working for us, and not against us.

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