Over the past week, Silicon Valley’s internet powerhouses out-communicated Hollywood, stopped internet piracy bills pushed by the big studios and even prodded the Republican presidential candidates and President Barack Obama to agree on something — that Hollywood’s internet piracy bills threatened the innovation of the web.
Traditionally, Silicon Valley has been reluctant to play by Washington’s rules. Microsoft did not build a major Washington presence until the late 1990s when it faced a big anti-trust suit. But last week, the industry demonstrated its power through a concerted campaign of shutting down some sites and posting notices on others about the industry’s opposition to the internet piracy bills.
Established opera companies and symphonies should not be hurt seriously by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week upholding a law that moved the work of composers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitry Shostakovich from the public domain to copyright protection.
Timothy O’Leary, general director of Opera Theatre of St. Louis, said in an interview, “It is possible that (the decision) will add some additional costs but not substantially.” O’Leary said that about one of Opera Theatre’s four productions each season is under copyright, but that “we don’t make decisions about what operas to perform” based on whether royalties are due.
David Yepsen has been director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, since April 1, 2009. Yepsen hails from Des Moines, Iowa where he was the political editor and writer for the Des Moines Register for 34 years and is the premier expert on the Iowa Caucus’s covering the caucus ever since their inception in 1972.
Yepsen said the caucuses have changed since the early days in the 70’s and 80’s where people would gather in living rooms, gymnasiums, and schools to discuss the candidates. Small retail politics in Iowa no longer exist and with big media outlets and huge campaign staffs focusing heavily on the candidates, some of the intrigue and relaxation of choosing a candidate has given way to sideshows and huge campaign events. Yepsen said the caucuses have lost their intimacy and neighborhood feeling of what they once were. Yepsen said it was easier to get to know each individual candidate without the glare of national media.
How would Joseph Pulitzer, founder of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1879, respond to news that the newspaper’s current parent company, Lee Enterprises, Inc., on December 12, 2012, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection?
It is safe to assume that Pulitzer knew that with every shift of an industrial paradigm, bankruptcy filings can mount up as high as the piles of pennies young children donated in Pulitzer’s campaign to fund installation of the Statue of Liberty in 1885. His newspapers in St. Louis and New York covered paradigm shifts as railroads outmoded wagon trains, electricity replaced gas lamps, and old technology companies began to unravel.
As both a two-time graduate of Syracuse University and a former six-year employee of the Syracuse Post-Standard, I have been asked quite a bit what I think of the allegations about Bernie Fine and how the newspaper covered the story.
Although it’s hard to explain to the public, my fear is that the public’s criticism of the Post-Standard’s decision not to publish the story nine years ago will make news organizations more willing in the future to print one-source stories that can ruin the reputations of innocent people.
A month ago Joe Paterno won his 409th game as football coach at Penn State University to become the all-time Division I leader in coaching victories.
Also in early November, the Syracuse University coaching duo of head coach Jim Boeheim and assistant coach Bernie Fine began their 36th season together on the bench in what looks like a promising year, with the Orangemen ranked number one in early December.
As December begins, both Paterno and Fine are done coaching, Paterno fired for not doing enough to put a stop to sexual abuse by a coach in his program, Fine for his alleged role in the sexual abuse of boys through their sports programs. For Paterno, the end came when a grand jury indicted Jerry Sandusky — Paterno’s longtime friend, retired assistant coach and once heir to take over the Nittany Lions — on multiple counts of sexually abusing boys, including on the Happy Valley campus.
Regional and local media in core Midwest agriculture states have been remiss when it comes to coverage of the $260 billion five-year 2012 farm bill and the rush in November to try to push the bill through the Congressional super committee without debate.
The failure of the so-called Congressional super committee to reach agreement on national debt and budget issues has been disappointing to many. However, this inaction may end up being a blessing for those wanting to thoroughly vet the upcoming 2012 farm bill.
There had been very little discussion of the 2012 farm bill at any level of media until mid-October of this year. This is when the small, joint committee with directions from the House and Senate Agriculture committees began pressing forward with their plan, trying to get it to the super committee for approval in late November.
Following the rulings in the Tribune Company’s bankruptcy case can be mind-boggling. The latest ruling, one that could eventually help Sam Zell, was reported on today in the Chicago Tribune. Take a look at this story.
This story is another reason why it’s important for media and citizens to have the right to videotape and record police. This could have been illegal in the state of Illinois although a number of recent rulings are cutting into Illinois’ strict eavesdropping laws. Read Bill Freivogel’s piece on Illinois eavesdropping laws here.
The University of Kentucky’s media relations department keeps making the news. This time the department banned a Lexington Herald-Leader reporter for changing the wording of a question in a question/answer session with an athlete. The Herald-Leader admitted to its mistake and corrected it but that wasn’t enough to keep the reporter from being banned. Earlier this fall, the media relations group banned a sports reporter from the student newspaper for interviewing an athlete without the media relations’ permission. This drew the wrath of numerous journalism groups. Sports information members should take the same approach referees take for a basketball or football game, or umpires for a baseball game — life is much better when you aren’t noticed. Someone needs to point this fact out to the Kentucky media relations group. Read the Kentucky Kernel’s story here.
The conviction of former Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich on 17 federal criminal counts on Monday is not surprising in light of the high percentage of convictions that federal prosecutors win in retrials of white-collar crimes after they have a chance to streamline complicated cases to appeal to juries.
A jury found Blagojevich guilty of 17 counts of wire fraud, attempted extortion, bribery, extortion conspiracy and bribery conspiracy. He was acquitted on one bribery charge, and the jury deadlocked on two counts of attempted extortion.
Venturing into a new frontier of First Amendment law, the Supreme Court gave constitutional protection to those seeking to use the vast stores of data and information collected by modern information technology.
The court ruled 6-3 that Vermont could not stop pharmaceutical companies from obtaining data on doctors’ prescription-writing practices – data the companies used to market their more expensive, brand-named drugs to the doctors. Vermont had tried to block this data mining of prescription information in order to protect the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship and to keep down health care costs.
Justice Samuel Alito didn’t direct his remarks at the press when he spoke to a ballroom full of lawyers in St. Louis. But it was clearly the press he had in mind when he described the misconceptions that people have about the Supreme Court.
Alito even singled out for criticism the star Supreme Court reporter of the past generation, Linda Greenhouse, who writes a column about the court in her retirement from the New York Times. He noted that Greenhouse had wondered in her column about “topsy-turvy world” Supreme Court where business had not won as high a percentage of cases this term as in the past.
“Maybe the law has something to do with it,” said Alito with some sarcasm. “Maybe the text has something to do with it. I know that is a radical thought.”
