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25 years ago the Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov created the ur-video game Tetris. Simple to play, hard to win and ubiquitous, the game continues to frustrate and entertain the masses. We speak with Pajitnov about how he started the shapes falling.
What’s playing out in Boston is a familiar drama: the sad spectacle of the slow death, by bleeding, of a venerable patriarch. The Globe’s crisis is on one hand remarkable because the paper has been a New England institution and an indispensable element of the democratic process for 137 years. But on the other hand it is but the latest victim of industry-wide pandemic. Boston Phoenix media critic Adam Reilly on the death throes.
Iran and Lebanon held elections this week. Iraq saw a spike in violence. A hotel bombing hit Pakistan. There's so much to cover around the world and increasingly fewer news outlets can afford to do it. McClatchy's Mark Seibel wrote a candid piece about his news organization's struggle to keep its foreign bureaus alive.
Perhaps the most complete picture we have of the insular, erratic dictatorship of North Korea comes not from the U.S. military but from one obsessed Google Earth-watching civilian named Curtis Melvin. Melvin explains how he pieces together his aerial intelligence and the story it tells.
Anti-smoking ads historically highlight one blunt fact: smoking kills. But the World Lung Foundation has analyzed the effectiveness of ads around the world targeting various cultures and discovered it's not that simple. Sandra Mullin, senior vice president at Communications for the World Lung Foundation, says the most effective ads highlight the pain, suffering and dismemberment that come from smoking.
Methamphetamine addiction has overwhelmed many western states. So in 2005 the Montana Meth Project was launched. The group approached the meth crisis as a consumer marketing problem and created a shocking ad campaign that’s spread to 7 states. Nitsa Zuppas Executive, director of the Siebel Foundation, told us last year that the ads work.
This week the long-awaited switch to an all digital television broadcast signal finally arrived. It's too early to know how many were left with a screen full of static, but Bob says goodbye to good 'ol analog.
No news site dominates quite like TechCrunch, a network of websites and blogs that has basically buried all other outlets, online and off, in coverage of technology and tech enterprise. But success has bred scrutiny, including a recent New York Times piece that questioned TechCrunch’s approach to journalism. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington explains his reporting process.
Highlights from Past Shows
The White House worked to tamp high expectations for Obama's Cairo address but, by the end of the week, the world was watching and listening. Naila Hamdy, Chair of the Journalism Department at the American University in Cairo, discusses the changing landscape of Egypt's media and how they covered the speech.
With the choice of Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the US Supreme Court this week the machinery of advocacy groups, pro and con, was sparked into action. Defying and supporting a supreme court nominee has become a veritable cottage industry for these groups and for the next six weeks we’ll watch them stir up public opinion and the press. Lawyer Tom Goldstein, founder of ScotusBlog, says any High Court nominee is but fuel for the politics industry.
On the Media is funded by The Bydale Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Overbrook Foundation.
