Wednesday, June 26, 2002

 

Merchants of Cool

Accompanying the video we watched today, "The Merchants of Cool," is a website which has a lot of great supplemental material. This includes transcripts of many of the interviews from the documentary, responses to the film from teenagers, and more information about the major media companies. It's worth exploring a bit. (And it also might be helpful to refresh your memory about the video come midterm-time).

Homework 1: the News

The homework assignment on news media, due next Monday in class, has been passed out. There are extra copies of the assignment outside of my office door (in Ellison). If you you have any questions or problems about the assignment, please contact me asap. And have fun with it!

posted by Molly Moloney 5:18 PM

Tuesday, June 25, 2002

 

More on Media Conglomeration and Consolidation

There's a lot more information out there regarding media consolidation and conglomeration and the media industries today. Below are links to a few sources you may want to check out if you're interested in or concerned about this topic.

Eric Boehlert (whose article about Clear Channel Communications we read for today) has written a number of other excellent articles related to the media giant. In fact, two new articles were published today. The first asks "Is Clear Channel selling hit singles?" . The second examines a potential congressional response to the pay-for-play practices at CCC and other radio giants. Also, If you're interested in some of his other work on the issue, search under Boehlert at salon.com.

It's hard to keep up with media production and distribution patterns, because the owernship of the companies seems to be constantly changing. The Columbia Journalism Review has a helpful (and regularly updated) resource to keeping it all straight. The site is straightforwardly titled Who Owns What?.

Earlier this year (1/7/02), The Nation published a special issue looking at the media industry. Mark Crispin Miller has an interesting analysis of media consolidation here and there's also a very helpful chart of the holdings of the Big Ten media comapnies.

If there are other aspects of this topic you'd like more information about, let me know.


posted by Molly Moloney 6:31 PM

Sunday, June 23, 2002

 

Welcome to Sociology 133

Welcome to Sociology 133: Media/Culture/Power.

Throughout the quarter, I'll be posting various messages, announcements, and links to further information about the issues that we're studying in class. If you find anything that pertains to the class that you'd like to share, I'd love to post it here as well. Email me your contributions.

Soon, I'll be posting links from which you can get more information about media consolidation and conglomeration (our first topic).

The reader for the course is available at Grafikart , in Isla Vista.

I'm really looking forward to this class and to getting to know you all better.

posted by Molly Moloney 4:58 PM