IDEA 20090108 Writing Column

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Status: Active

Next: Propose


There are various ideas here for coming up with a column for magazines/publications.

Contents

ReMedia Scan

ReMedia Scan is a one page column on 1-3 emerging media arts, software culture, research, blogs and online content. The idea is to conflate found media as a starting point for people to generate their own content afterwards. Then, readers are challenged to download, consume, remix, and/or appropriate the content and send it back into the publication for possible publication. This would work very well with a website component and as a way to both unearth content that is not easily discovered on the web, and content that is legally usable. A possible website component that would work quite well is a wiki or associated blog post on the topic.

It is key to feeback into each month's article a box highlighting the top presentations and remixes of media written about previously.

Example

Night of the Living Dead is a public domain film downloadable from the web. This column will talk about the film's creation, provide pointers to the content, and then challenge readers to consume the content, show it locally to others, and encourage promotion on the web with common tags "remediascan."

Goal

  • Unearth unheard of media projects, experiments, and research, and make palatable.
  • Create a digital trail with tags and community feedback into established web channels (twitter, facebook, etc).
  • Since so much content is already read via blogs by the time a magazine is published, the goal is to seek out unique content that not many people have discovered. Then get others to consume it, share it, and further expand the standard magazine column format to build a media snowball effect attributed to the magazine article. The goal is to build culture out of a simple column.

Spread Free Culture

Similar to the #ReMedia Scan concept above, this column would hunt for cutting edge free culture projects that are developing yet not many people have discovered. Every day there are mammoth projects being launched that would get hearts pumping like the launch of Apple i-phone, or a new phone. The trick is that no one knows about these projects. The jargon and cultural barriers for access are too high for the general population. Each month, this column will investigate at least one software and one cultural project which is a diamond in the rough for anyone to get involved in either consuming and helping make the project better.

The hype of openness is a myth. Spread Free Culture exposes great projects and provides quick access to what needs to be done to contribute to these projects. After 3-6 months of columns, it would be quite worthy to investigate the effect of these columns on the discussed communities and write up how folks have contributed to discussed projects.

  • Promote unknown open source and open content projects on the web such as open media projects, businesses, legal music mixing communities, and ripe new open source software projects.
  • one page column
  • 1-3 different free culture projects exposed

Example Projects

  • Mixxx is an advanced audio mixing software seeking a community manager and developers. Not many people use this software and opt for expensive ableton live, protools and serato.
  • WikiHow is an CC licensed wiki of howtos. However, WikiHow doesn't have many illustrations for the steps in their HowTos. Spread Free Culture will outline some of the articles such as how to create a business and how to transfer money internationally and ask for assistance in creating illustrations and edits from more knowledgeable people.


Jargon Explosion

Jargon Explosion takes on different terms and breaks down a word's etymology and connects it with current culture and history.

Magazines like Wired have primarily promoted reductive bleeding edge terms without explanations. This column would explode ideas around terms and new jargon. This column would launch with a wiki supplement. A new wiki article would be started upon creation of each new term to be printed so that people who read the article may correct, fix, and get credit for their contributions (in print). Who cares if there is a new buzz word! what is interesting is how words come into existence and how they were born.

An even more interesting application would be to pick a term, and contribute knowledge about the term to Wikipedia, then create an article collaboratively on another wiki with the same licensing. Then, when publishing the article, give credit to all the authors who participated in the article creation. This is an interesting model for promoting deep readership, participants rather than followers, and giving credit to those who participate. In some ways, this is nuking a disconnected part of current magazines especially in tech, the letters to the editor.

Specifics

  • one page column
  • 1 concept/term taken on per issue to expand upon new words

Examples

  • Emoticon
  • Verticon
  • LOL
  • Total FAIL
  • Fail Whale (ok, this is lame now)
  • Free Culture
  • Open Content
  • Open Source
  • Hyphy
  • Dubstep


Through the Great Firewall

There is way too much cliched fascination with Japanese Schoolgirls, advanced Korean phones, and the perfect models who show off these gadgets. The real hardcore tech heads and business people are shifting their attention to the country with the largest population of Internet users - China. Not only can you buy damn good knock-off iPhones, literally filling out the entire Apple product line Apple doesn't produce by companies whose names you can't pronounce, China is arguably doing capitalism better than America.

Question: all your clothes are made in Guangzhou, China. Did you know that its the 3rd largest city in China with some measuring the total size at 22 million people? Did you also know its the region where most Chinese-American and Chinese-Britons come from?

Through the Great Firewall is a pun on the concept that the Internet in China is filtered and that if you really want to get unfiltered knowledge through to the outside world, one must tunnel through on an encrypted connection. This one page column will investigate a current monthly trend in technology and media culture in China. There will be quick history lessons along with punchy analysis necessary to invite those interested into the *red* technology space.

Examples

  • The top video sharing site in China, Toudou, has 3 times the traffic of Youtube and streams full HD quality films.
  • Visit a pirate video store where you can get any video ON-DEMAND.
  • A DVR product in china means you get a hard drive full of gigabytes of media. Once you are done watching the films, then you ask the service to fill up your drive with more media.
  • http://www.chinasmack.com/pictures/funny-and-clever-chinese-shanzhai-brands/ has some examples of funny knock off brands

ReVersioning

Take an incomplete Wiki-based entry, such as a Wikipedia page, and complete the entry. The goal is to create content where it is particularly weak, contentious, or does not exist by focusing community attention in each column to the next month's list of 3 target articles. This column could also operate on other popular collaborative sites like WikiHow, [http://wikitravel.org/ Wikitravel, and [http://wiktionary.com/ Wiktionary. An added bonus is that the magazine that does this spreads their own web url of attribution around the web as providing a community service to gain goodwill.

Examples

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