An Internet video newscast called the Voice of the Caliphate was broadcast for the first time on Monday, purporting to be a production of al Qaeda and featuring an anchorman who wore a black ski mask and an ammunition belt.

And the early adopters of video blogging are [drum roll] al Qaeda.. This is clearly a poke at Voice of America...

The anchorman, who said the report would appear once a week, presented news about the Gaza Strip and Iraq and expressed happiness about recent hurricanes in the United States. A copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, was placed by his right hand and a rifle affixed to a tripod was pointed at the camera.

Purported al Qaeda Newscast Debuts on Internet

If President Bush wants to make anything of his second term, he should make a quest for energy independence the moon shot of our generation.

Well, here it is.. The first new Friedman column behind the New York Times subscription wall.

Goodbye Tom! I refuse to pay $7.95 a month when there is only one columnist I regularly read there. I might pay $10 a year for "FriedmanSelect", if half of the money made it directly to Tom. All NYT's other content, I usually find via discussions taking place on the web. Those conversations all start to go dead today. The New York Times voice of commentary is about to get really, really, really soft and quiet.

Hopefully this will not last long. Thomas, if you can hear me, PUT UP A BLOG. PLEASE!!

Thomas Friedman's Latest Article | NYT Subscription Wall Goes Up

Your impression when tuning in to CNN's The Situation Room for the first time is likely to be, "Geez, there's a lot going on here."

There is. And much of it involves technologies familiar to internet regulars, but mostly unheard of in the context of TV newscasts.

Throughout the daily, three-hour show, a split video wall behind host Wolf Blitzer displays up to six separate feeds, often topically unrelated to each other.

I've been commenting to several people lately how I like The Situation Room's format. I think CNN is doing something right with it. It will be copied.

Ok, so I was poking fun at them when that worm took out CNN's newsroom..

The name of the program fits well with the environment they have set up for Wolf to do his broadcasts in. Wolf stands with his notes in front of a very large NOC style six-panel video screen displaying video coming in from the field, people he is interviewing, or anything else they have ready to go. It worked very well during the Katrina coverage. I get the impression that its easy to steer the show around in different directions as new video and information comes in. They break away often to review what's being said on the blogs about the major news stories.

It winds up having that exciting Philadelphia "action news" feel to it, not due to raised voices and rapid-fire delivery, but actual higher levels of information transfer. There are almost always several video feeds being shoved at the viewer, and you have a choice of what to look at that's more diverse than talking head vs. ticker at the bottom of the screen. Wolf does break into "Breaking News Tone" sometimes, but usually only when something new is coming in. When you have it on in the background, the cues for when you should pay attention seem honest. There are exceptions I've noticed, but there are always exceptions. Its a new format. If they catch on to the key thing -- keep it honest -- it will continue to be well received. Many people use the 24-hour stations as background noise/info. The subtly of switching into "Breaking News Tone" is enough to catch your attention. Anchors build up a level of trust with the listener if they do their job right. The tone of their voice matters. If you over do it, you wind up in the FoxNews trap, where you can't tell when something is actually worth paying attention to. You just go numb. Dynamics in the presentation of this stuff is key.

A perfect example of this is FoxNews's over use of the "Fox Alert" zig-boom sound. As documented in Outfoxed, the Fox News Alert sound was specifically designed to grab the attention of the viewer when they would break in with something new that w... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

Wired News: CNN Hacks New TV Technology

The New York Times reporter Judith Miller has now been in jail longer for refusing to testify than any reporter working for a newspaper in America. It is a very long time for her, for her newspaper and for the media. And with each dismal milestone, it becomes more apparent that having her in jail is an embarrassment to a country that is supposed to be revered around the world for its freedoms, especially its First Amendment that provides freedom of the press. Ms. Miller, who went to jail rather than testify in an investigation into the disclosure of an undercover agent's identity, has been in a Virginia jail 55 days as of today.

... or 56 days at the time of this posting.

Integrity comes at a price. Its very upsetting that for this reporter, that price is her freedom.

Its time to start printing up those yellow stickers that say "FREE JUDY".

Free Judy Miller

A RAW STORY examination found Coulter's work to be at worst plagiarism and at best a cut-and-paste repetition of points authored by conservative religious groups in the early 1990s. These groups sought to de-fund the National Endowment for the Arts, detailing projects paid for by the NEA they dubbed “obscene.”

The Raw Story | Coulter caught cribbing from conservative magazines

Redstone, a regular guest at the annual Sun Valley conference, had been keeping a low profile at this year's event. On Friday he agreed to speak to reporters in the lobby of the resort as other key players in the media world including News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and Time Warner Inc. CEO Dick Parsons strolled past.

Will sanity return to issues of media ownership? I don't think it was ever there to begin with..

Redstone: 'The age of the conglomerate is over'

Those of you who live in LA can now get your morning weather report from David Lynch.

DAVIDLYNCH.COM- LA Weather

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Arnold is PodCasting.

Oh, it gets worse: So is Rush

Welcome to California