Thanks for plugging my case study on mobile advertising for NAA - it's been a year, and the trends that I identified in my research have only grown stronger. In the last three months, I've sat in on conference sessions where media buyers discussed their ad strategies for the next 3-5 years. Big (non)suprise: their plans for the future include exactly $0.00 earmarked for buying traditional print advertising. Instead, they report that the Mandate From Above is that they start buying ads in the emerging Big Three: 1) online video, 2) social media, 3) mobile.

>This will be useful, if it can be relied upon to deliver news and information without bias, or even averaging out to "without bias." Which would be refreshing after a solid dose of the Mainstream Obamedia, which doesn't even PRETEND to be objective anymore.< You are applying Old Media rules to what is a New Media world. If you doubt the efficacy of New Media, I refer you to the recent circ numbers for newspapers and the AdAge whoop-whoop alerts about the impending implosion in local TV ad revenue. And no, this is not because the MSM is "in the tank" for Obama. If that were the case, the anti-Obama media would be racking up record profits. It is not. In fact, it is declining even worse. Then again, reality does have a well-recognized liberal bias. No, what is relevant here is the fact that the people now vote with their mouse-clicks, and the information and "bias" they prefer will win. Stories about subjects that people consider to be relevant to the way they live their lives will become more popular, and their authors will reap the rewards of that. As for slant, bias - whether political, or, as journalists fear, from Big Biz "astroturfing" or co-option, the cool thing about the web is that scammers, poseurs & shysters get exposed. It may take a while, but sooner or later, it happens And the reaction to the initial manipulation is a backlash that usually far outweighs the initial gain from being a scam artist. Have a little faith in the American people. They are not fooled all the time. The proof of that happened on a national scale about a week ago.

>This will be useful, if it can be relied upon to deliver news and information without bias, or even averaging out to "without bias." Which would be refreshing after a solid dose of the Mainstream Obamedia, which doesn't even PRETEND to be objective anymore.< You are applying Old Media rules to what is a New Media world. If you doubt the efficacy of New Media, I refer you to the recent circ numbers for newspapers and the AdAge whoop-whoop alerts about the impending implosion in local TV ad revenue. And no, this is not because the MSM is "in the tank" for Obama. If that were the case, the anti-Obama media would be racking up record profits. It is not. In fact, it is declining even worse. Then again, reality does have a well-recognized liberal bias. No, what is relevant here is the fact that the people now vote with their mouse-clicks, and the information and "bias" they prefer will win. Stories about subjects that people consider to be relevant to the way they live their lives will become more popular, and their authors will reap the rewards of that. As for slant, bias - whether political, or, as journalists fear, from Big Biz "astroturfing" or co-option, the cool thing about the web is that scammers, poseurs & shysters get exposed. It may take a while, but sooner or later, it happens And the reaction to the initial manipulation is a backlash that usually far outweighs the initial gain from being a scam artist. Have a little faith in the American people. They are not fooled all the time. The proof of that happened on a national scale about a week ago.

I understand the anger, and there are times when I find myself seething with it as well. I have had ugly epithets screamed into my face, been shoved, told to leave the country. The 9/11 attacks brought out the best in some people ... and the worst in a lot of the right-wing supporters who saw it as a handy tool with which to bash the people they've been told to hate & blame for everything that's wrong in their lives. Even writing this cursory a description of what the last eight years have been like makes me tighten up. The best advice I've gotten is akin to what your friend said - but with a slightly different, more intense angle: "Don't let yourself be a victim of identity theft." Not the usual kind of identity theft, where the thief steals your credit cards, drains your bank accounts, takes out loans in your names. No, this other kind of identity theft is one in which the thief steals your soul ... when their hatred and intolerance and fear are so intense, and pushed on you so hard, that you lose sight of who you really are, and start responding to them in kind. When you see the snarling, sneering Fox News hosts twisting and bending the truth, indulging in self-serving "spin" in which everything the guys on their team do is right, and everything the guys on the other team do is wrong. Identity theft. If you allow yourself to get locked into this back-and-forth, which you can see in this very comment thread, you are allowing the haters & the ignorant and the senselessly frightened steal away the real you. And then you are no longer yourself - you are merely a mirror image of them, of their anger & vitriolic spewing rhetoric. You are dancing to their tune. Resist this. It's OK if you lapse now & again - nobody's perfect, and FSM knows, the amount of negative energy thrown out by our purported leaders these last eight years is hard to resist, or turn around. But if you manage to stop and recognize when something has set you off, and you're not acting like yourself - the way you had that moment of clarity in the park, Wil - then you can step outside of the self-destructive negative feedback loop that Fox News & its enablers & manipulators want us to fall into. Where we all tear each other apart, blind to the larger crimes being committed in our names, to the looting of our future for the benefit of a few, for the destruction of the very planet. It's time for America to remember who it is - who we are. We took an important first step on Tuesday. It's going to be uphill every step of the way ... but I have hope now that we can actually do it.

I understand the anger, and there are times when I find myself seething with it as well. I have had ugly epithets screamed into my face, been shoved, told to leave the country. The 9/11 attacks brought out the best in some people ... and the worst in a lot of the right-wing supporters who saw it as a handy tool with which to bash the people they've been told to hate & blame for everything that's wrong in their lives. Even writing this cursory a description of what the last eight years have been like makes me tighten up. The best advice I've gotten is akin to what your friend said - but with a slightly different, more intense angle: "Don't let yourself be a victim of identity theft." Not the usual kind of identity theft, where the thief steals your credit cards, drains your bank accounts, takes out loans in your names. No, this other kind of identity theft is one in which the thief steals your soul ... when their hatred and intolerance and fear are so intense, and pushed on you so hard, that you lose sight of who you really are, and start responding to them in kind. When you see the snarling, sneering Fox News hosts twisting and bending the truth, indulging in self-serving "spin" in which everything the guys on their team do is right, and everything the guys on the other team do is wrong. Identity theft. If you allow yourself to get locked into this back-and-forth, which you can see in this very comment thread, you are allowing the haters & the ignorant and the senselessly frightened steal away the real you. And then you are no longer yourself - you are merely a mirror image of them, of their anger & vitriolic spewing rhetoric. You are dancing to their tune. Resist this. It's OK if you lapse now & again - nobody's perfect, and FSM knows, the amount of negative energy thrown out by our purported leaders these last eight years is hard to resist, or turn around. But if you manage to stop and recognize when something has set you off, and you're not acting like yourself - the way you had that moment of clarity in the park, Wil - then you can step outside of the self-destructive negative feedback loop that Fox News & its enablers & manipulators want us to fall into. Where we all tear each other apart, blind to the larger crimes being committed in our names, to the looting of our future for the benefit of a few, for the destruction of the very planet. It's time for America to remember who it is - who we are. We took an important first step on Tuesday. It's going to be uphill every step of the way ... but I have hope now that we can actually do it.