From PBS’s new media blog, MEDIASHIFT

” The Case for Citizen Ownership of the Los Angeles Times

Host Mark Glaser makes the argument that the Los Angeles public could take charge of their greatest journalistic asset and make the business thrive in a new media world where readers are taking control in so many ways.

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/09/
newspapershiftthe_case_for_cit.html

SINGAPORE BANS ECO MAGAZINE

”Singapore has banned the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine after it failed to comply with media regulations, the government said. Singapore revoked approval for the Hong Kong-based magazine to be circulated in the city-state because the publication failed to appoint a legal representative and pay a SGD 126,000 (EUR 62,400) security bond.

Both requirements are among tighter restrictions that Singapore imposed in August on five foreign publications: the Review, Newsweek, Time, the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune. The government had said in August that the five publications would be reclassified as ‘offshore newspapers,’ and must comply with legal provisions governing such media.

Under Singaporean law, an offshore newspaper must obtain a permit to circulate domestically and must appoint a person within the country to accept any notice or legal process on behalf of its publisher. It must also submit a SGD 200,000 (EUR 99,000) bond with the government.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/print?id=2505945 - AP, ABC News

ATTACKING THE 911 TRUTH MOVEMENT’

Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com

Why the “9/11 Truth” movement makes the Left Behind series read like Shakespeare.
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/42181/

PAUL KRASSNER ON THOMAS RICKS ON JERRY RUBIN

” As a co-founder of the Yippies (Youth International Party) with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin in 1967, I observed how they were able to manipulate the media to further their antiwar mission. If you gave good quote, you got free publicity. Furthermore, in a tactic borrowed from the CIA, if you presented newsworthy street theater, the media manipulated itself.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your agenda, that kind of behavior has a way of backfiring. And so I was both amused and annoyed by an item in the “Inside the List” column by Dwight Garner in the August 13 edition of The New York Sunday Times Book Review. He wrote:

“Thomas Ricks, the senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, has a book on the hardcover nonfiction list this week–his ‘Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq’ (Penguin Press) makes its debut at No. 1. Ricks’s book got a boost from strong reviews and from appearances on both ‘The Charlie Rose Show’ and NPR’s ‘Fresh Air,’ where Terry Gross interviewed him on two successive days.

Ricks is a fleet, vivid writer, but he’s also got a gift for radio. On Fresh Air, he filled the air with analogies that were funny, sad and apt, sometimes all at once. George Bush and his team were like ’60s radicals. (’They really were going to, kind of, “groove on the rubble,” as Jerry Rubin used to say. They were going to tear it down and see what happened.’)”

Of course, glibness is not necessarily a virtue. “Has it come to this?” asks anthropologist and Yippie archivist Samuel Leff. “With the Iraq war now an obvious catastrophe, Ricks is comparing the Bush gang’s mindless destructiveness to ’60s radicals like Rubin? The destruction of democracy, then and now, emanated from a radical Oval Office. Richard Nixon put thugs to work breaking the noses of protest leaders, from Abbie Hoffman (successful) to Daniel Ellsberg (unsuccessful).”

Ricks is a great reporter and his book FIASCO should be widely read. But as Krassner points out he knows nothing about the 60’s Movements. And take that from another co-founder of YIPPIE—as Paul Krassner will acknowledge—none other than your news dissector.

I WANT MEDIA: Rupert Murdoch’s Next Move - Blogging?

News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch is profiting from the power of people generating content through his ownership of MySpace, writes Robert Young. “I’m going to bet that Murdoch’s next move is to acquire a blogging platform.” Also: Will MySpace soon
be worth $15 billion?

http://featured.gigaom.com/2006/09/27/rupert-murdoch-blogging/