A linkblog

More Predictions on the End of Twitter

Twitter will not “end,” it will just lose its relevance.

Arguably, it has already lost its relevance, and nothing has replaced it.

Twitter is no longer where news happens. People post “what’s happening” to Reddit, Facebook groups, and private chats.

I continue to post to Twitter only because I have not built something better. [By the time you are reading this post, my new personal website will be live and I hope it is the something better I need to share info and thoughts]

The decision to throttle the number of tweets people can read AND require log-in to view tweets significantly diminishes Twitter’s usefulness for real-time information.

My year-over-year Twitter stats for @JoeyColeman are down around 75%!

The links:

The Guardian: How Twitter’s new drastic changes will affect what users can view on the site

NPR’s Media Reporter on Geraldo Rivera

““80 year old contemplating retirement.”

Geraldo Rivera may be retiring, after the past few decades on FOX News, and his colourful talk show which was on television during my youth.

David Folkenflik writes about the complexity of the man, “a constant showman” and all the complexities about what his retirement means about television past and present.

Rivera, a muckraking local television news journalist turned network star at ABC News and CNBC, proved to be an award-winning and self-promoting sensation. He built up his own brand decades before the word “influencer” had been coined, talking network executives into primetime specials and daytime talk shows filled with stories of scandal and dysfunction.

Rivera “spent years coming after” Folkenflik after NPR revealed Rivera’s misleading coverage [I am being generous] in Afghanistan.

Nonetheless, Rivera spent years coming after me. He sought to convince my bosses to retract the stories, comparing me to Janet Cooke, the reporter for the Washington Post who had to give back a Pulitzer Prize after it was revealed she made up her story. He told a reporter he wanted to break my nose. (Never did.) He told Jay Leno on the Tonight Show that I had penis envy. He spent a year fruitlessly trying to get an award bestowed to me revoked. The uproar that ensued from my coverage was, he told the Atlantic, “the most grievous wound.”

He once called me “a really weak-kneed, backstabbing, sweaty-palmed reporter.” I have deployed that for many years as the start to my official NPR biography. Naturally, I have a wall in my study filled with Geraldo editorial cartoons. I suspect he and I have that in common.

The World’s Oldest National Newspaper Ceases Print

The reason for the end – a change in laws ending the legal requirement for companies to print public announcements.

The world’s oldest national newspaper has printed its last daily edition almost 320 years after it began.

Wiener Zeitung, a Vienna-based daily newspaper, will no longer print daily editions after a recent law change meant it had ceased to be profitable as a print product.

The law, which was passed in April by Austria’s coalition government, ended a legal requirement for companies to pay to publish public announcements in the print edition of the newspaper, terminating Wiener Zeitung’s role as an official gazette.

Legal notice laws continue to exist in both Canada and the United States.

Their original purpose was to ensure public notification in widely circulated newspapers. Today, fewer and fewer people are reading regional newspapers. Public notices are distributed using a variety of channels.

Laws requiring purchasing legal notices now serve as a forced subsidy and have become a battleground in the United State’s political culture war.

Here’s an August 2022 piece on the battle in the United States:

“In some cases, the push to drop statutorily required legal notices is being described as a budget-cutting move in a digital age. In others, it is openly being portrayed as punishment for negative media coverage.”

Time: The ancients measured it first.

The day is tied to the sun. Months are tied to moon phases. The hour, that’s a human construct.

An interesting commentary on how the Ancient Egyptians first measured and created the “hour.”

How did the 24 hours in each day come to be?

Here are the closing paragraphs from the piece: Ancient Egyptians measured the first hour, and changed how we related to time

It is therefore possible that the choice of 12 as the number of hours of the night — and eventually 24 as the total number of hours from noon to noon — may be related to a choice of a 10-day week.

And so our modern hour originates from a confluence of decisions that happened more than 4,000 years ago.

New York Times on the Classic TV Game Shows

The New York Times explores why class television shows continue to thrive on traditional television as scripted shows, soap operas, talk shows, and late night shows are ending their runs.

Some of my fondest memories of my time in the military are directly tied to classic TV game shows.

Basic Training (2001) – We recruits regularly received a pre-lunch reprieve from gruelling activities as our instructors left us alone and went over to the Mess to watch The Price is Right between 1100 and 1200. CFB Gagetown, The Infantry School (2003) – I’d go to the Infantry School staff lounge to watch The Price is Right, taking advantage of the commercial breaks to talk business with whomever on the staff I needed to exchange info with.
CFB Gagetown, Junior Ranks Mess (2003) – The Gagetown Junior Ranks Mess is a boisterous place every evening. There isn’t much else to do on the base. However, at 1930, the Mess becomes silent. Jeopardy is on and the mess is full of soldiers all intently watching. The smart Aleks among us may be daring enough to play along, the truly smart ones keep our mouths shut. Shout the correct answer, bragging rights, wrong answer, you are buying drinks for your table.

Mattel Brands and Movies

Mattel is the latest brand to sell movie rights for its brands. The New Yorker discusses here: In an era when “pre-awareness” rules Hollywood, the company is ginning up plots for everything from Hot Wheels to UNO.

The article (and access granted to the writer) seems tied to help promote the upcoming Barbie movie.

I’m looking forward to the movie, it looks like it will be fun pop-culture escapism.