Some mainstream media have incorporated the fantastic ability of the web to allow reader comments to stream live. Apparently, the misguided professional believes this is a wonderful way of operating public journalism, which seems to be so popular right now. Really, we’re demonstrating our real connections with our audience. Unfortunately, when reader comments are opened on every story, and allowed... 

As I predicted right here on Mediamum.net in March 2009 when the Rocky Mountain News folded, Colorado’s the Denver Post is now also in trouble. Its owners are asking for bankruptcy protection. They’re still not humble. I’m hearing professional journalists and academics in journalism blame all sorts of things for this situation: 1. Falling ad revenues (you know, that’s a failure... 

In The Sydney Morning Herald’s role as gatekeeper/the fourth estate, those paying for its content deserve a standard of professionalism that is better than those it does not pay for. Is a t-shirt necessary to tell the difference between professional journalists and citizens? You can buy this one at www.zazzle.com. That’s the idea, anyway. The Sydney Morning Herald, however, doesn’t... 

The Islam and the Media conference, held by the Center for Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Colorado at Boulder (January 7-10) was a huge success in bringing together leaders in thought and practise on religion and media. But you wouldn’t know it if you’d been watching mainstream media. At a time in our history that international front pages and lead stories are obsessively... 

Ah the miracle of medicine, look how much you’ve done for women and babies. Birthing in the Western World is no longer fraught with danger, thanks to your hand. Or is it? Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net The oh-so convenient Christmas miracle story splashed internationally across mass media headlines of a Coloradan woman and her baby dying through childbirth and then “inexplicably”... 

This pre-internet installation was and remains a vital consideration in the future of media. It has been supposed for a long time that communication and media technologies allowed people who already knew each other to improve existing relationships. Alternatively, broadcast media were used to send corporate-owned messages to the ‘masses’. There has been very little in the understanding of communities...