The Sternberg Effect
Media
Digital Advertising’s Repeat Problem
Digital advertising has a repetitive problem. Or, more accurately, its problem is that it lacks repetitiveness. Continue reading
Newspapers from November 22, 1963
JFK was killed on November 22, 1963. Here are images of newspapers from that day and the following days. Continue reading
On Steve Jobs
I wrote this about 15 minutes after learning of the death of Steve Jobs on my Tumblr blog: Going to step away from my iMac and onto my iPad as I wait for my iPhone to ring. Possibly the biggest outside influence in my life, in all of our lives – he changed the way … Continue reading
Occupy Wall Street: What A Difference A Week Makes
Yesterday evening, I strolled down Broadway from Houston to Zuccotti Park, about a half hour walk, anticipating what the Occupy Wall Street protests would look like a week after I last visited.
I passed the inelegant federal buildings on Broadway and Reade, and saw ahead of me, a couple blocks away on the sidewalk in front of City Hall, a group of protesters and picketers marching side by side. I maneuvered around them and noticed there were several police officers and quite a few paddy wagons with more cops sitting inside them. It began to rain.
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Occupy Wall Street
Upon exiting the 2/3 at Wall Street, I was expecting to be swept up in a crowd of people marching down that corporate alleyway, playing music and chanting, “We shall overcome.” Or, at the very least, see some of New York’s Finest pepper-spraying protesters while men in $5,000 suits stood back and watched. Instead, I saw the typical throng of tourists gawking at the Fed, taking pictures of the George Washington Statue and lining up to pose with the New York Stock Exchange in the background. I also saw steel barricades, which obviously meant protest.
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Florence
We landed in Florence in the early afternoon, after a relatively painless six-plus-hour flight across the Atlantic, with a layover in Amsterdam. Upon reaching our hotel, Hotel Rosso 23, nestled in the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, we debated for a whole three-minutes if we should walk around the city or take a nap and hope we didn’t sleep through the day. We walked. Of course…
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Why I Will Never Fly KLM Again
Imagine this scenario: you are a doctor – a heart surgeon – who is away on a much needed vacation overseas. You booked your flight months in advance, followed all the rules, and after 2 weeks away, as you get ready to board your flight home, you are told, “Sorry, sir, but the flight is overbooked and there are no seats available for you. Not even in business class or first class.” Now imagine you are supposed to fly home on a Monday so that you can perform open heart surgery on Tuesday on a 6 year old child who, if she doesn’t have this surgery, will die. Instead, you are stuck in a foreign country, with no way of getting home.
I am not a doctor. Obviously. But the subtext of this scenario, getting bumped from a flight, happened to me recently. And according to the concierge at the Courtyard Marriott in Amsterdam, this happens at least 15 times a day.
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Critical Analysis of “Page One: Inside the New York Times”
It’s been a very long time since I wrote a critical content analysis of a film, so I decided to write one about “Page One.” A note: This is unedited and very, very long, and is not meant to be a “like it or not” review, but instead, to use a theoretical lens to discuss this particular documentary. This critique looks at “Page One” through an expository mode of representation lens, which is meant to highlight a) how to read documentary film, b) how this film uses a the expository mode of representation to push its agenda and from that, c) can documentary film be objective? Continue reading
Should We Be Mad?
A few days ago, after catching up on a few Daily Shows, I ranted on Tumblr about being mad: We should be mad as hell right now. Mad at the government for not fulfilling its duty of protecting those who need protection; mad at the media for propagating untruths over and over again until we … Continue reading
On Being Stood Up and Generational Differences
I had two meetings scheduled today; one with a mid-to-late 30s guy and another with an early-to-mid 20s guy. Both are in the media space, each working for hugely influential companies.
The older guy sent me an email this morning saying something came up – let’s postpone. We communicated and rescheduled. These things happen. The second guy never came to the restaurant we were supposed to meet at. Yep, I was stood up.
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Tumblr
This post originally ran on Mediaite. I wanted to add it here because this blog has gotten lonely and wanted some company. But please feel free to read this and other posts of mine over at Mediaite.
For 50+ years, if someone were to mention The Big Three Networks, one would automatically know the conversation was about ABC, NBC and CBS. Over the past several years, a new Big Three Networks has emerged, only now it’s the social networks of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (and while the folks at MySpace believe they’re in this cadre, who really uses MySpace anymore except for the next promising local band?).
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Nine Years
Nine years. 3,285 days. Man, time flies. One of the things that make us, well, us is our capacity to communicate complex ideas (another awesome human characteristic is our opposable thumb, but that’s for another day). We are story tellers and each generation has their story to tell, typically marked by an Earth-shattering experience.
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The WTC Mosque
So imagine this scenario:
You just finished reading your big book of answers when you hear a knock at the door. You think to yourself, well, it can’t be Trouble because there was a knock. Trouble enters without letting you know. You walk to the door where you find three close friends. You let them in, but they seem different. There’s a look of fear, and a look of sadness in their eyes. This is when you realized Trouble can come into your home, invited, masked as Friendship. Your friends see your big book of answers sitting on the table and they tell you, “We’re sorry, but you have to come with us.” You’ve heard stories, you know what happens next, so you say, “Let me tell my kids I love them.” Your friends, the ones who have aligned themselves with Trouble in order to protect their families, lead you out of your house, as they take your big book of answers with them to be tossed aside, burned and destroyed.
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Communications Renaissance: Thoughts From Guest Lecturing
Last night, I had the pleasure of guest lecturing at NYU for a class about PR 2.0. About 2 minutes into the class, I felt right at home. Maybe it was because the class was intimate – only 8 students; maybe it was because the professor, Matt Knell making me feel at ease. Or maybe because I’ve been there before, in front of a class of people wanting to learn.
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What’s a Jew?
This week brought two interesting aspects of what it means to be a Jew to the world. The first, which actually started in January but didn’t get much notice until recently, has been seen as both a triumph of spirit and a desecration of memory. The second has the ability to eradicate what it means to be a Jew.
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Unnecessary Journalism Phrases
- How about “lifeless body” when describing a dead person? Here’s a good (bad)...
- bobbymacReports: A growing number of stories with a growing number
- Alliterative Journalism Phrases
- Apologies on the lack of posts
- While not necessarily an unnecessary journalism phrase, friend...
- 50. Old Man Winter - 11/7/11
- Push The Envelope Submitted by unretrecissement and her...
- 49. A.M. in the Morning/P.M. in the Afternoon/Evening, at Night - 11/3/11
- 48. Emergency Situation - 11/2/11
- 47. Roll(ed)(ing) in his/her grave - 10/31/11
The Sternberg Effect 