apparent attack on dutch royal family

this broke on twitter not too long ago. from breaking tweets:

an apparent attack on the Dutch royal family at a parade in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, has failed, but not before a car drove through a crowd, injuring at least a dozen. The vehicle was headed in the direction of Queen Beatrix before it crashed; the royal family watched in awe.

Radio Netherlands reported earlier Thursday that joyous festivities were set for Apeldoorn to celebrate Queen’s Day. The remainder of the celebration has been canceled, according to NOS.nl.

Local tweets in Dutch were all over this event, utilizing Twitter to share information in the breaking news situation.

here’s the youtube video:

on the slow-mo you can see the car was already damaged from plowing through the crowd.

a series of awesome takes on the crisis in the newspaper industry

jay rosen, a planet-sized brain teaching journalism at nyu, compiled a list of recent opinion pieces on the current crisis in the newspaper industry. all are scary-smart, and for anyone in the industry, or anyone interested in the future of the media, they are compelling reading:

If there is one overriding factor behind the current financial crisis of the press, it is simply that the Internet has undermined the newspaper’s role as market intermediary. Advertisers do not need to piggyback on the news to reach consumers, and consumers have other ways to find out about products and sales. Newspapers also cannot possibly duplicate online the monopoly position that they have enjoyed in print during recent decades as the sole surviving papers in their metropolitan area, and so they no longer have the pricing power for ads that Buffett describes as “economic heaven.” Craigslist, eBay, and many other sites provide alternatives–and none of them bears any cost of news production.

To read the news, moreover, consumers do not need to pay for it online. Newspapers have been able to make money from their print editions at both ends: by charging advertisers for eyeballs, and by charging the eyeballs, too. But online there are other news sources such as sites run by TV and radio stations, which have never charged their viewers or listeners. So, for newspapers, there goes circulation as well as advertising income.

To be sure, more newspaper websites could follow the example of The Wall Street Journal and charge for premium content. But sources of financial news have always been able to set higher prices than other news media because of the value that business readers derive from reliable, up-to-the-minute information. The problem for most newspapers is that restricting access to their websites would not only cost them ad revenue but potentially allow another news organization to seize their role online. Either way, by giving away their content or limiting access, they may be digging their own graves.

that’s from paul starr’s piece, Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption), which you can find at the new republic.

winnie the pooh on flu

if not newspapers then what?

just had a great conversation with the online editor of goldcoast.com.au, one Peter Willcox, who just happens to be my boss.

we were yarning on about the general state of play in the newspaper industry. bunches of uncertainty, as you can imagine, given that we’re just coming to end of a round of redundancies in our workplace. hopefully the only round of redundancies.

we started tossing around ideas for business models that will actually pay our salaries in the future.

pete’s theory is a neat one.

media organisations like news limited (our masters) need to become multi-faceted (god knows, that’s what they ask of their employees). obviously, they know this, or there wouldn’t be moves afoot to produce digital editions via ‘foldable’ screens that will come with your subscription fee and through which you can download your daily newspaper.

but pete’s thought was a little more wide-ranging even than that.

everyone agrees that the thought of paying for online content on newspaper websites is a big FAIL. nobody wants to do it, and not even i will do it – i’d rather go find my news somewhere else.

but what if, instead of paying my ISP a monthly fee for email and web access, and paying telstra or optus or whoever a monthly fee for my mobile phone and landline, and paying austar or foxtel a monthly fee for cable tv, and paying my newspaper a subscription fee … what if, instead of those things, i pay news limited one monthly fee to provide all those things?

the problem then, of course, becomes one of diversity. i don’t just want news limited’s (or whoever’s) take on the news. and if i look down my list of favourite news and information websites, that’s an awful lot of ‘providers’.

but somewhere in all this there has to be a solution.

perhaps if i subscribe to news limited’s monolith of services, and pay a small additional fee, i also get access to a range of services from fairfax, or scripps, or apn (??!!??) or whoever.

and of course my web access still allows me to get to the myriad of free news sites and blogs.

just a thought … and one p. willcox is the planet-sized brain to come up with it.

the australian continues to delude itself

my thanks to the mumbrella for bringing this article to the forefront.

the australian is the national flagship of news limited in this country. so, it’s no big surprise to find it defending its territory against the social media phenomena … except myspace, of course. myspace is brilliant (news limited owns myspace).

what is disappointing, however, is the continued delusion that online media are ‘content-killers’. it’s interesting to me that this editorial from the australian talks about newspapers creating communities, but then cites another newspaper’s circulation figures rather than its own as proof.

And because the product is convenient and the content is appealing, the paper is a community that people pay to belong to. Certainly, bad newspapers will fail; they always have. But ones that serve their communities with content will stay strong. And that is not something to sneeze at.

yeh? tell that to the seattle post-intelligencer, the rocky mountain news and any number of good newspapers, community newspapers, that have died, and will die in the arse over the coming months.

newspapers like the australian need to wake up to the fact that bleating about people not being willing to pay for online content doesn’t solve the problem. coming up with a business model that keeps online content free, and still pays the journalists to come up with quality content is where the brainpower should be going.

not carping at the little brother that’s become, in my professional opinion, one of the best breaking news facilitators i’ve ever seen.

you can read the full editorial from the australian here, and you can read the mumbrella’s take on it, here.

ahhh this is what i needed

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

(m’in a weird mood)

dorothy zbornak zingers

and then there’s this:

with all thanks to ms snarker, for digging these up in the first place.

obama’s first 100 from the lgbt perspective

in a word … disappointing, so far.

But 70% of LGBT voters came out in support of Barack Obama because they expected that the support for equal rights expressed on the campaign trail would result in action for LGBT people once Obama was in office.

And when it comes to actual change in the lives of LGBT people, nothing has been done. Obama has failed to hand in any of his assignments.

The gay rights agenda is clear: pass the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act that adds LGBT Americans to the list of protected groups in existing hate crime legislation; pass the United American Families Act that permits committed LGBT couples to sponsor their foreign partners into the country; repeal the Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal benefits to same-sex couples even if they are married; pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would protect employees from discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity; and repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a policy that forces many service members to forego relationships or live part of their lives in secret in order to avoid discharge from the military.

This is just the fight for legal equality. It says nothing of funding and support for programs that target at-risk youth (1 in 3 gay youths have attempted suicide), public awareness campaigns that promote tolerance and social services – specifically health services – that cater to the LGBT community.

… Well, individual LGBT citizens are facing a crisis. They are being fired from jobs so hard to come by already because of their sexual orientation. They are paying huge amounts more in taxes than their straight counterparts despite the fact that everyone is scrimping and saving to make it through the economic downturn. They are losing their life partners to deportation because immigration rights don’t extend to families with two parents of the same-sex.

Sure, these are tough times, but being an LGBT American puts a magnifying glass on your life. Economic problems, social problems, problems with access to social services, are all compounded by the lack of legal equality.

Obama has been ignoring this reality.

In his own words, the struggle for LGBT rights is “about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect.” He has an obligation to put that promise of equality on his immediate political agenda.

We have an obligation to make enough noise, raise enough money and put enough pressure on Congress to ensure that Obama’s overall grade on LGBT rights becomes a sparkling “A”.

you can read the whole thing from emma ruby-sachs at the huffington post.

the swine flu thing …

… is a complete beat-up. between 10,000 and 36,000 people a year die from influenza of one sort or another in the united states alone. and apparently we’re shitting ourselves over this because … ? it’s a new strain?

please.

can we all just take a deep breath?

photos that changed the world

awesome site. check it out.