Partial Readings: Dispatches from Media-land

Partial Readings: Dispatches from Media-land

Partial Readings: Dispatches from the Media-land

Protection from Correction
Arianna Ciccone worries that a wiretapping bill before the Italian parliament will threaten internet press freedom. The law demands that ??those responsible for information websites??issue corrections within 48 hours to any complaint regarding website content, whether blogs, opinion, comment and/or information in general.? Ciccone argues that two days won?t be enough time for small web outlets to make corrections, and that rather than doing more fact-checking, the law will lead bloggers to diminish their public profile and blunt their criticisms of the government. Would Andrew Breitbart stand a chance?

Amazon Rules the Publishing Jungle
In the Nation, Colin Robinson describes the impact of Amazon.com?s aggressive tactics on independent bookstores, publishing houses, and writers. But its most chilling effect is the homogenization of culture: ?Though the overall number of titles published each year has risen sharply, the under-resourcing of mid-list books is producing a pattern that joins an enormously attenuated tail (a tiny number of customers buying from a huge range of titles) to a Brobdingnagian head (an increasing number of purchasers buying the same few lead titles), with less and less in between.? Ruth Franklin responds in the New Republic: ?The real trouble with Amazon, it seems, is that nobody truly believes we were better off without it?Before it appeared on the scene, if you lived in a part of the country that happened not to be served by a great independent bookstore, you were out of luck when it came to getting books other than bestsellers.?

Eliot Spitzer, Journalist
Recent staff shake-ups at CNN show a network ?taking the route of entertainment over news,? reports Nancy Franklin. Its new lineup includes Eliot Spitzer, who?s been spotted in some unexpected places since resigning as governor of New York. Of Spitzer?s show, CNN co-founder Reese Schonfeld says, ?I can?t think of any reason to put that show on the air?[At] best, he?ll be another shouter.?

Facebook Beyond the Screen
Joshua Brustein searches for the right metaphor for Facebook in the ?Week in Review.? ?Facebook has been called the sterile suburbs to the gritty urban Internet; it is a ?walled garden? in the organic messiness of the Web; it is Russia under Vladimir Putin; it is?today?s AOL?But perhaps the most telling metaphor compares Facebook to the other companies lurking at the bottom of the American Customer Satisfaction Index: cable companies, wireless telephone service providers. Utilities.? The comparison isn?t too different from Christine Smallwood?s assessment of the best analogy for the web as a whole: ??not a glistening Tootsie Roll pop, not an open freeway, not a shimmering clear pool of chlorinated water nor a siren-littered sea, not even a chiseled movie star, but giant, hulking factories dotting the landscape of the Pacific Northwest and the Eastern Seaboard?Beyond the screen, the Internet looks like everything else. It looks like money.?