06.30.09
Posted in Media at 7:33 pm by Travis
Posner: Expand Copyright Law, Save Newspapers – Law Blog – WSJ.
I love the law just as much as any American, but someone needs to tell the Masters of the 20th Century that attacking technology with the law doe not work. Just ask the record industry. They have sued everybody and their grandmother, literally, and the sales have still fallen and the industry as a whole is in state of flux.
Technology often acts as a tsunami. Once it has passed you, few rarely survive without having to become something else. The wave has passed the newspaper industry which was their own fault. They dumbed down their content to a level that allowed technology to facilitate it better that millions of dollars of presses, staff and other equipment. The next step is to reinvent themselves, not use the law to make up for their ineptness. I think conservatives call that personal responsibility. You see when the rest of push back because companies take the jobs over seas and bankrupt whole towns, the corporate interest says that it is “market forces”, capitalism at work, survival of the fittest. When they fail to make the necessary changes to keep themselves viable in the market, they want a bail out, legal and/or financial. Technology is just as much as a market force as your competition hitting the market with a product that blows you out of the water. Either way, you man up and deal with it instead of wanting to take your ball and go home because you actually have to “use” that MBA you got.
If you bring copyright law into the mix, people will stop acquiring the news from the reliable sources period. Since a lot of it is skewed and corporatized anyway, will we really miss it? We may end of having to let journalist investigate and actually report the news in a clear, concise and honest way then newspapers can go back to making money the old fashion way, earning it. Thank you John Housman.
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04.10.09
Posted in Media at 8:03 pm by Travis
Stop Big Media » Blog Archive » A Better Road Map of Minority Media Ownership Data.
In the process of conducting these studies, we learned that the commission had collected inaccurate date on minority and female ownership since 1998. Many stations had filled out their ownership forms incorrectly – omitting key diversity data — but the FCC had failed to monitor or verify the accuracy of the submitted information. Instead, the agency released ownership figures that were simply wrong.
The GAO has three reports confirming this and the fact that the main hindrance to minority media ownership is the lack of access to capital. What worse is that when stations were being sold, minority media owners were not privy to the sale of these stations until the deal was about to close. The most disappointing fact is that there was a tax deferment for those who sold their stations to minority companies, but the provision was repealed in 1995. A year before the great FCC giveaway in 1996 where we saw conglomerates such as Clear Channel and Citadel become media powerhouses.
As a prelude to the mortgage crisis, many of the stations were sold far above their value which may be the reason the Citadel is near bankruptcy. I have seen this first hand in Central Arkansas. There is no local progressive radio here. The one station that served the black community and the home for most of the black churches was sold right out of the community.
The funny thing about was that no one who claims to be from the religious right came to assist their brothers in the same way the lead the charge in our neighborhoods for all of the evils of abortion and gay marriage. The main thing on talk radio in Little Rock is a call to arms. Lock and load.
1980 Media Report
2007 Media Report
2008 Media Report
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12.14.08
Posted in Media, business at 12:51 am by Travis
It’s a shame that many in the press have sold their souls to corporate interest, otherwise they would inform the public about truths with the struggles of the auto industry and stop blaming organized labor for their ills. I find it ironic that NBC who produced a documentary called “If Japan can, why can’t we?” does not mention anything about Dr. Deming’s work, but instead continually push the issue of high labor cost being the main issue for the failure of the Big 3. I have a new interpretation of the adage, “Hindsight is 20/20.” Sometimes to see the present clearly, you have to look at the past. I spend a lot of time reading journals and visiting the Government Accountability Office website. One article in particular talks about the issue of foreign investment into the country in the 80’s from Japan to not only build plants, but parts suppliers also.
One of Deming’s philosophy’s of quality management stated that you must first understand the “process” of what you are doing, or you really don’t know “what” you are doing. According to Deming, the process of manufacturing existed far beyond the worker on the assembly line. Management must take ownership of the parts of the process that are beyond the control of the worker such as parts suppliers. He believed that companies must not base the relationship of the supplier strictly on being the cheapest. The auto industry had the nasty habit of trying to build a car and them inspect it for quality. Deming stressed that quality must be everyone’s responsibility from the floor to the boardroom and that it must be continuous and every improving.
What the media fails to tell you is that US automakers and their Japanese counterparts do not manufacture cars the same way. The Japanese were admired for their efficiency, but that is because their “process” was more refined than the US companies. Deming’s philosophy also included creating an atmosphere of collaboration. The parts companies were part of the actual design of the cars instead of receiving engineering drawings saying, “Build this!” as they did in America. Parts manufacturers were also strongly encourage to reduce variables that caused them to create defective parts and constantly make the process better each time.
The Japanese used the “Just In Time” method which meant creating just enough parts needed for the cars being produced at the time and bringing the parts to the floor “just in time” for them to be assembled in the car. The parts were also pre-assembled into sections. For instance, a whole dash assembly may be brought to the floor instead of installing all of the parts individually for the dash on the assembly line. The “just in time” method reduced inventory cost. The parts suppliers knew that not having the parts right when it was time to assemble them could greatly effect the assembly process due to the absence of backups, therefore parts manufacturers had to get it right every time.
Enter the 80’s. The foreign car makers were starting to take over, so the automakers and their congressional allies cried foul. Japan tied one hand behind its back and voluntarily reduced the number of cars that it imported to the US. Instead of the US companies working to refine their process of manufacturing, they went the “if you can’t be ‘em, join ‘em” route. They began to partner with the Japanese companies to produce vehicles. Do you remember the “Geo” line of cars? This was a joint venture between Toyota and GM if you call slapping your name of the vehicle after it comes of the line a joint venture.
What really took the automakers under was parts, and the irony was that we could have had the Japanese by their “lug nuts” in this area, but since many of the automakers were still housing their own parts departments and the fact that the quality level was no where near the foreign companies, we had to play second fiddle, again. We could not supply the foreign car makers with parts because we were not familiar with building sections of the car and delivering them just in time to the line with little or no defects. In all honesty, we did not stand a chance with their refined process that took decades in the making. We did not understand the process! Some parts manufacturers developed successful relationships with the foreign companies only after they adjusted to the rigors of Deming’s quality control process. The cost associated with making the cars came more from the lack of quality control and lack of efficient manufacturing processes. The working suffered during this time period because many of the the US car makers stopped making parts and started using the foreign car parts makers because the quality was better and cheaper.
Deming was also a strong believer in making the worker feel good about his job, creating an atmosphere that cause workers to produce quality which fostered a since of pride in what they do. When people feel as though their work means something and that it is obvious that management sees them as an extremely needed part in the process, you don’t need a union. When foreign car makers bring outsourced work back into the company to keep people working instead of kicking them to the curve as your first solution to a slow down, you don’t need a union.
For more information on this subject, go spend time over at the Government Accountability Office website. www.gao.gov Here is more information about the automakers and parts manufacturers.
Next I will tell what happened when the US companies discovered Deming.
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05.08.07
Posted in Media at 8:14 pm by Travis
Media Matters – Locked Out: The Lack of Gender and Ethnic Diversity on Cable News Continues
I have talked about this in the podcast. I think the ultimate slap in the face is MSNBC. MSNBC has blacks on during primetime. They’ re all in prison , but they’re on none the less. Oh wait, they call them MSNBC Documentaries. Well, that makes it better. Don’t get me wrong, I like MSNBC. I just think that they all need to man up, and add some flavor to the night time tv lineup. Alison Stewart would do an excellent job.
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