Permanent link to MTA daily media news

A Wiretapping Deal (American Constitution Society)
Preliminary reports indicate that key players have reached a deal regarding amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with a vote to be held on Friday. Here is the proposed language (and a very quick summary).

New wiretapping bill dubbed ‘repugnant’ and ‘a capitulation.’ (Think Progress)
Under a “compromise” wiretapping bill the House is expected to approve tomorrow, U.S. phone companies that cooperated with President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program after Sept. 11 “could be shielded from lawsuits” as long as “there is written certification that the White House asked a phone company to participate and assured it” of the program’s legality. However, as critics of the deal have noted, there isn’t much to the bill that constitutes a “compromise”: – Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI): “The proposed FISA deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation. … Allowing courts to review the question of immunity is meaningless when the same legislation essentially requires the court to grant immunity.”

Change We Can Believe In (by digby)

The Strange Bedfellows Campaign is really gaining steam. The reason, of course, is because we are watching a sell-out of epic proportions happen right before our eyes and people are angry.

AP Says Drudge Retort Excerpt ‘Matter’ Closed; No Official Policy Announced (Paid Content)
Hard to believe that all of the discourse (public and private) on how the AP handled the way its material was being used by the Drudge Retort boils down to this for now—a non-response response following the usual pattern of trying to shut the door after the horses are not only out of the barn but on into the next county.
Click through to read the AP’s statement.  I’m back to quoting their articles whenever I want to.

Eight in 10 Americans say country is headed in the ‘wrong direction.’ (Think Progress)
A new AP-Ipsos poll finds that nearly eight in 10 Americans believe “the country is moving in the wrong direction…amid soaring food and gas prices, falling home values and unending war. Just 17 percent say the country is going in the right direction.” This figure is the lowest since the survey began in 2003, and when compared with other past surveys, “the general level of pessimism is the worst in almost 30 years.”

Friday: The US Senate Ladies Auxilliary Luncheon (by riverdaughter at The Confluence)
The US Senate’s Ladies Auxilliary met on Tuesday to discuss women’s issues.  A luncheon of chicken salad, tea sandwiches (no crusts!) and sparkling lemonade followed the discussion and the event finished with a demonstration on scrapbooking campaign memorabilia. In attendance were Senators Diane Feinstein (CA), Barbara Mikulski (MD), Amy Klobuchar (MN) and Barbara Boxer (CA).  Senator Claire McCaskill, the very junior senator from Missouri called the event to order and represented the Ladies Outreach Volunteers of the Obama campaign.  Senator Hillary Clinton (NY) whose campaign themes were represented at the meeting, was not in attendance. All were in agreement that the topics under consideration were very important to women but no action items were proposed at this time.

Among the issues of greatest importance were, ensuring that women receive equal pay; keeping jobs in America; making healthcare more affordable; providing benefits for military veterans; and protecting the environment.  For the last item, a garden party was proposed for the next event with container gardening as the theme. The subject of abortion was tabled until after the election as some of the ladies felt it was impolite and could be seen as offensive to some constituencies. The group also discussed their plans for Denver and volunteers were recruited to hang the crepe paper bunting.
This is a spoof, of course, but the women of the Senate did meet to discuss promoting issues dear to Hillary’s heart, after having thrown Hillary herself under the bus.

Hillbama (by vastleft at Corrente)

The image above now appears on Obama’s home page. I clicked it with trepidation. And I found good news, bad news, and the “yeah, right” news. The good: It includes a generally gracious (yeah, it’s easy to be gracious once you’ve kneecapped your opponent) speech he gave in Minnesota on 6/3/08, where among other things, he gives a shoutout to Universal Healthcare. Impressively, there’s no booing when he praises Hillary to his supporters (the things you can do with digital technology!). Her commitment to UHC is also praised in text.

The bad: The MN video clip starts with “At this defining moment for our nation, we should be proud that our party put forth one of the most talented, qualified field of individuals ever to run for this office.” Does he really think the qualification card is a strong one for him? Really? I know he had 12 amazing minutes in the Senate before he focused on his presidential run, but still…Finally, at the bottom of the page you’re asked to sign up and “share your story.”… Trust me, you can’t handle the truth. Not that you plan to do anything with the submissions but send vapidtalk e-mails and requests for money. Well, maybe if I posted a “conversion narrative” about my Opiphany, maybe that would get some mileage. But I’ll bet dollars to arugula that no one reads ’em at all. Like a dope, I was kind of hoping to see a little more sense of what Obamanation thinks motivates PUMAs [Party Unity My Ass).

Obama, Hillary Clinton to campaign together
CHICAGO - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama's campaign announced Friday that he will campaign with former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton next week, a step toward unifying a fractured Democratic Party after a bruising primary fight.

Obama Privatizes (Capital Eye)
Barack Obama told supporters [Thursday] morning that he’ll be forgoing more than $80 million in public funds for the general election, making him the first major party nominee to reject the taxpayers’ grant since the program began in 1976. Obama called the system “broken” and said he will instead rely on small donations to land him in the White House. “Instead of forcing us to rely on millions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs, you’ve fueled this campaign with donations of $5, $10, $20, whatever you can afford,” Obama said in a video message on his website… Obama’s campaign isn’t built entirely on small donors–about 55 percent of his total haul so far has come from big donors (those giving more than $200), CRP has found.

Obama’s campaign tightens control of image and access (by Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny, International Herald Tribune)
Strategists for Obama, the country’s first black nominee, have made it clear that they believe they need to take extra steps to control his image and protect against attack. But such efforts at times appear to conflict with the candidate’s stated desire to be unusually transparent and open… In spirited discussions with reporters barred from Monday’s meeting with African-American civic leaders, aides said that no cameras were allowed because the participants wanted the meeting to be private, even though it was announced on the daily hotel roster of events. Later, other aides said the lighting was not properly set up for television quality. When Obama met with religious leaders last week, his campaign kept out photographers and reporters and refused to share a full list of participants. Professor Douglas Kmiec, a conservative constitutional scholar at Pepperdine Law School, said Obama told him and others in attendance that he was keeping the meeting private so everyone could speak without fear of public judgment.
Isn’t that what George Bush has said about the need for presidential privacy?

Barack Obama is a Muslim, and other stories (by Mike Madden, Salon)
The Democratic nominee’s campaign is working overtime to combat rumors — yet misinformation is still running rampant across the Internet

From the Fact Check Desk: What Did Obama’s Half-Brother Say About Obama’s Background? (by Jake Tapper at Political Punch, ABC News)
It was a sloppy paraphrase that emerged as false evidence. Malik Obama, the older half brother of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, gave a brief interview to Israeli Army Radio. The Jerusalem Post listened to the interview, apparently, and produced a story saying “Malik Obama says his brother will be good president for the Jews. Barack Obama’s half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background.”… So is it true? No. ABC News got a hold of the audio of Malik’s interview with Israel Army Radio, and Malik said nothing of the kind… [N]owhere in there does Malik expressly say anything about Obama having a Muslim background. And nowhere does he “confirm” anything about Obama having a Muslim background.
Click through for a link to the cached version of the Jerusalem Post article, which I told you about yesterday, and for a link to the audio of the Malik Obama interview.

Bloomberg defends Obama before Jewish audience (AP)
NEW YORK - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is urging Jewish voters to denounce the online whisper campaign that for months has pushed the false rumor that Democrat Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim.

WSJ Reports that Obama Uses Paperclip: Common Older-Style Big-Government Device (by Dean Baker)
The WSJ’s dislike for Senator Obama is overflowing from its editorial page. A front page piece complained that: “Sen. Obama cited new economic forces to explain what appears like a return to an older-style big-government Democratic platform skeptical of market forces.”… If Senator Obama thinks that the government should try to regulate the financial industry so that executives are not able to enrich themselves by mass marketing bad loans that leave homeowners homeless and stockholders out of luck, is this “a return to an older-style big-government Democratic platform skeptical of market forces?”

Obama could win vote, lose election (by Harry Siegel at Politico)
Here’s the scenario: Obama racks up huge margins among the increasingly affluent, highly educated and liberal coastal states, while a significant increase in turnout among black voters allows him to compete — but not to win — in the South. Meanwhile, McCain wins solidly Republican states such as Texas and Georgia by significantly smaller margins than Bush’s in 2004 and ekes out narrow victories in places such as North Carolina, which Bush won by 12 points but Rasmussen presently shows as a tossup, and Indiana, which Bush won by 21 points but McCain presently leads by just 11. One possible result: Even as the national mood moves left, the 2004 map largely holds. Obama’s 32 new electoral votes from Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Virginia are offset by 21 new electoral votes for McCain in Michigan and New Hampshire — and despite a 2- or 3-point popular vote victory for Obama, America wakes up on Jan. 20 to a President McCain.

DNC Gets More From Accountants Than From Lobbyists (Capital Eye)
Here’s further evidence that the political significance of the Democratic National Committee’s refusal of lobbyists’ contributions is greater than the new policy’s financial significance: In 2004, federally registered lobbyists—whether they work at lobbying firms or in-house for corporations, trade groups or unions—contributed only about $581,000 to the DNC, or not quite two-tenths of 1 percent of the committee’s overall fundraising in ‘04. That’s less than the party collected from accountants—and 27 other industries—in 2004. And before Barack Obama ordered his party to fall in line with his presidential campaign’s anti-lobbyist (and PAC) policy, the DNC had collected less than $100,000 from K Street types for the 2008 election—again, less than professional number-crunchers but also the tourism industry, livestock producers and many others.

McCain says he’ll take public financing (On Politics, USA Today)
Republican John McCain told reporters traveling with him today that he will accept public financing for the general election. That means he’ll have $84.1 million to spend between Sept. 4, when the GOP convention ends, until Election Day on Nov. 4.

Bush rallies GOP support for McCain at annual dinner fundraiser
Seeking to energize party loyalists, President Bush on Wednesday gave his most extended public support to Sen. John McCain, his former foe for the White House. The president said McCain is the only candidate in the race who can face tough decisions and “will not flinch.”

McCain ignored request to cancel visit to flood-ravaged Iowa. (Think Progress)
Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) visited areas of Iowa hit hard by recent flooding. His press secretary said the trip was “practical” for McCain because he happened to be “on his way to Minnesota for a town hall meeting.” Iowa Gov. Chet Culver (D), however, disagreed with the practicality of the trip as his state undergoes a massive flood recovery effort, noting that McCain ignored his request to cancel the visit… While these high-profile politicians bring attention to the disaster, they cause headaches for hard-pressed law enforcement. For President Bush’s visit to the state [Thursday], “hundreds of law enforcement officers were diverted from flood recovery to provide security for him.” Last week, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) canceled a visit at the request of state officials.

McCain Calls For Nuclear Power Expansion
Sen. John McCain called Wednesday for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 and pledged $2 billion a year in federal funds “to make clean coal a reality,” measures designed to reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Driller Instinct (by Paul Krugman)
[T]he administration has spent the last eight years trying to convince Congress that the key to America’s energy security is opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling — even though estimates from the Energy Information Administration suggest that drilling in the refuge would make very little difference to the energy outlook, and the oil companies themselves aren’t especially interested in punching holes in the tundra. But it still comes as a surprise and a disappointment to see John McCain joining that unfortunate tradition… Mr. McCain has now aligned himself with an administration that, even aside from its blame-the-environmental-movement tendencies, has established an extensive track record as the gang that couldn’t think straight about energy policy.

Bush And McCain Try To Steal Credit For Webb’s GI Bill That They Consistently Worked To Defeat (Think Progress)
[Wednesday], House leaders in both parties struck a deal on a war supplemental bill that includes expanded college benefits for veterans. The GI Bill is Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-VA) version, as well as a provision allowing troops to transfer the benefits to family members. President Bush has promised to sign the legislation. Now, however, Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — the two most vocal opponents of Webb’s bill — are trying to take credit for it.

Bolton Fearmongers: ‘Best Outcome’ Of Obama Presidency Is ‘More Embassy Bombings, WTC Attacks’ (Think Progress)
[Wednesday], Fox News’s John Gibson hosted former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton on his radio show. They discussed Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) foreign policy. Bolton charged that “the best outcome” of an Obama presidency would be “a replay of the Clinton administration,” meaning “more embassy bombings” and “more World Trade Center attacks”.
Click through to listen to the audio.

Republicans Choose ShadowTV for RNC Streaming (Who?) (by Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins at Mashable)
Not to be outdone by the Democrats in their tech savvy, the RNC continues to announce technology partnerships. Last time it was with the behemoth Google, but this time it’s a virtually unknown company called ShadowTV for their video streaming solution. It took a bit of poking around time for me to figure out exactly what it is that ShadowTV does that’s particularly unique to the streaming market… The aim of ShadowTV’s coverage for the RNC seems to be capturing every last second of news coverage of the event and streaming them to a centralized location… It’s an interesting concept, and I like to see new ideas being advanced in the world of online video, but it is indicative of the addiction that the Republican Party has to Old Media… [A]t least online, the Republicans will continue to be outclassed by the Democrats, even when in terms relative to the potential usage of the toolsets available the Democrats are only using a fraction of what’s possible.

The Bush Legacy Bus…coming to a town near you. (Think Progress)
Americans United for Change is launching a Bush Legacy Bus Tour, a “museum on wheels dedicated to chronicling the disastrous legacy of President Bush and the conservative policies he and his allies have pursued.” The bus hits the road June 24 and is scheduled to make roughly 150 stops between now and Election Day.
Click through for a link to view a slideshow of the construction of the bus.

Tim Russert Blew It on Iraq. So Why Are We Canonizing Him? (by Alexander Cockburn, The Nation)
The delirium in the press at Tim Russert’s passing has been strange.

Novak, Russert, and the Washington Protection Racket (by Jack Shafer, Salon)
In a recklessly honest passage [in his most recent column], the conservative [Bob] Novak attributes the “peculiar pro-Cuomo slant” of his column to [Tim] Russert’s move to liberal Gov. Mario Cuomo’s staff. In other words, Novak fesses to spinning positive columns about a politician whose politics he despised in return for good material from his friend Tim. In Washington, such behavior is tantamount to running a protection racket, a charge that has long been aimed at Novak.

Brian Williams is temp replacement for Russert on ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday (Show Tracker, Los Angeles Times)
NEW YORK — NBC executives decided today that “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams will host “Meet the Press” this Sunday as the network ponders a permanent replacement for moderator Tim Russert. After nearly a week of mourning the loss of Russert, who died of a heart attack on June 13 in NBC’s Washington bureau, the grief-stricken network news division began to focus on the difficult task of identifying his successor. Aside from Russert’s role as the host of the most-watched Sunday political talk show, the 58-year-old served as NBC’s Washington bureau chief and the network’s go-to analyst of this year’s presidential campaign.
Has it been only a week?  It seems like a lifetime.

Think Again: New Orleans After the Storm (by Eric Alterman and George Zornick. Center for American Progress)
When Hurricane Katrina first happened, even the most docile reporters began to cover race, poverty, and inequality. But since then everyone has dropped the story.

Limbaugh: Black Katrina victims ‘whined and moaned’; white Iowa flood victims are ‘backbone of America.’ (Think Progress)
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Rush Limbaugh blamed the victims for the humanitarian disaster in New Orleans, saying it was the result of “the welfare and entitlement thinking of government.” On Tuesday, he again denigrated the hurricane victims by comparing them to the Midwest flood survivors, who aren’t “a bunch of people raping people on the street.” He added that they, unlike people in New Orleans, are the “backbone of America”.

Mythbuster: The Futile Fence (by TChris at TalkLeft)
At $1 million a mile, you’d think it would take Spiderman or the Incredible Hulk to make it over Homeland Security’s new border fence with Mexico. A terrorist job stealer should need the resources of the Impossible Mission Force to thwart such an expensive barrier. Here’s how “a group of ordinary Mexicans–one a grandmotherly woman, another a 10-year-old boy”–did it: “First they tossed their day packs over the 12-ft. (3.7 m) barrier of steel mesh. They had chosen to cross at a spot where the fence made a small right-angle jog, because there was a supporting post extending about halfway up the angle. This gave them a foothold, and from there, the strongest members of the group boosted the others to the top.” The fence is pure politics, an expensive show for the hard-liners. Fences don’t work.

Mythbuster: The economics of nice folks (by Samuel Bowles, Santa Fe Institute)
Sam Bowles … points to new experimental evidence that people do often act against their own personal self-interest in favor of the common good, and they do so in predictable, understandable ways. Poorly-designed economic institutions fail to take advantage of intrinsic moral behavior and often undermine it… As the world becomes more interconnected and the resulting challenges to humanity increase, learning to harness these altruistic impulses becomes even more important, Bowles says. So the economists’ “holy grail,” to learn to design institutions and policies to direct the selfish impulses of individuals to public ends, “will be necessary but insufficient,” Bowles says. “The moral nature of humans must also be recognized, cultivated, and empowered.”

Media Matters for America headlines

• AP’s Sidoti falsely asserted “the only outside groups running ads in earnest so far are those aligned with Obama”

• Hume claimed Gore’s “energy use has surged more than 10 percent,” ignored Gore’s response that it’s all “green power”

• Blasting Franken’s “vulgarity,” Wash. Post’s Gerson touted McCain’s “civility,” ignoring McCain’s “vulgarity” and tolerance of it

• Savage: “I’d hang every lawyer who went down to Guantánamo”

• Boortz again referred to victims of Hurricane Katrina as “parasite[s]“

• Borger baselessly claimed “recent polls” show that “suburban women … don’t like Barack Obama very much”

• Hasselbeck on Obama: “[H]e seemed for a while more willing to give the fist bump to Ahmadinejad than our own General Petraeus”

• NY Times, WSJ reported McCain “has been a champion of public financing,” but not that he may be breaking the law

• Detroit Free Press, Toledo Blade uncritically report false assertion that Obama would raise taxes on 21 million small businesses

• Ignoring attacks, Politico’s Smith claimed “well-funded attacks from independent groups on behalf of John McCain” have “so far [been] absent”

• Predicting McCain will attack Obama over public financing, CNN’s Crowley did not report that McCain may be breaking the law

Iraqi convicted for spreading al-Qaeda messages on Web
A German court sentenced an Iraqi man to three years in prison on Thursday for spreading messages by al-Qaeda leaders on the Internet, a ruling that the judge described as a “warning signal.”

LEBANON: Newsrooms Fall Prey To Seven Deadly Sins (IPS News)
Prejudiced reporting is not uncommon anywhere, but in Lebanon the level of news distortion has taken on a new dimension as a result of assassinations, physical threats, political pressure, biased reporting, lack of professionalism, rampant corruption and self-censorship.

Journalists in Exile (Committee to Protect Journalists)
At least 82 journalists fled their native countries under threat or harassment in the last 12 months, with more than half coming from conflict-ridden Iraq and Somalia, the Committee to Protect Journalists has found in a new survey.

Four Charged As Politkovskaya Murder Inquiry Ends
Four men have been charged in connection with the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, investigators said Wednesday, but her former editor complained the case was far from solved.

Text-message ruling could change corporate policies 
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Most employees know their bosses are usually within their rights snooping on workers’ e-mail, but text messaging has been in murkier territory. A federal appeals court sought to clarify matters in a ruling Wednesday… Employers must have either a warrant or the employee’s permission to see messages that aren’t stored by the employer or by someone the employer pays for storage, the court said.

One in three IT staff snoops on colleagues
One in three information technology professionals abuses administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues’ salary details, personal e-mails or board-meeting minutes, according to a survey.

New workshop will include investigative journalism “all-stars”
Former Center for Public Integrity director Charles Lewis is launching the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University’s School of Communication. “My goal is to have a cluster group of all-stars with high quality interaction with upper class undergrads, grad students and bringing in writers from outside that we care about,” he says. “The interactions with the news organizations would have to be close and early. We wouldn’t dump it on their lap at the last second.”

EXCLUSIVE: Top Newspaper Web Sites Make Big Gains in Unique Users
Almost every newspaper Web site that made May’s top 30 list ranked by traffic increased the number of unique users year-over-year. Some of the biggest gainers: The Dallas Morning News, The Detroit News, and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis.

Nall swears off newspapering after reading Abrams’ memo
Nancy Nall writes after reading [Tribune Chief Innovation Officer] Lee Abrams’ latest dispatch: “At least he didn’t suggest we all write STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS with random caps; Like This; …like our READERS DO. They’ll understand, because more of them are like Lee ABRAMS, a man who made a fortune in radio but DIDN’T KNOW that reporters actually GO PLACES LIKE IRAQ to cover Iraq. The paper just Assumed he knew that when a Story has a Dateline that says BAGHDAD, that means IT WAS WRITTEN THERE.”

Innovations editor has to beg the biz side to try new things
Eileen Brown, innovation director at the suburban Chicago Daily Herald, told a forum she gets her best ideas — and some “cockamamie” ones — from journalists, while she has “to beg and plead the business side” to try new things. During the “Will Newspapers Survive?” discussion, Chicago Sun-Times editorial page editor Tom McNamee compared the news to popular music: “Even bands like Wilco, nobody’s buying the records, they get them free online. So what’s going to happen, music is not going to die, people still love music, there will still be bands out there making fantastic music, but they won’t make megafortunes.”

Murdoch: Digital Could Make Up 75 Percent Of Dow Jones Revs (Paid Content)
Dow Jones gets about half of its revenues from its digital operations right now, and within a few short years, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch expects his subsidiary to receive 75 percent of its revs from its online business.

It’s Official: HuffPost Is Fastest Growing News Site In America! (by Greg Mitchell, Huffington Post)
The new numbers are out from Nielsen Online and now there can be no doubt: The Huffington Post is currently the fastest growing major news site in the U.S.

Arianna invades Chicago (by Jeff Jarvis)
[Wednesday] night at one of the Guardian’s Future of Journalism sessions they are running for staff (and putting online), editor Alan Rusbridger had a conversation with Arianna Huffington and I do believe this is new: Arianna is going local. She’ll devote one editor to curating news and blog posts in the market. Jemima Kiss beat me to blogging this (she must have had less of the red wine at the dinner afterwards). She just added a green section and will launch books, international, and sports soon. “We are an aspiring newspaper,” she said.

Earnings: Economist.com Users Up 39 Percent, Annual Revenues Up Eight Percent (Paid Content)
At three million, Economist.com got 39 percent more unique users in a year that saw eight percent higher revenue. Results for the year to March 2008 showed 199 million page views and £266.4 million revenue, leading to 23 percent better profit of £44.3 million. Electronics revenue now accounts for 17 percent of the company overall, and the focus now is on CFO.com, the US site for financial executives. Despite industry caution over the economy, the group said: “The Economist Group is well-positioned to outperform the market despite the weak dollar, advertising shift to online and the uncertain economic outlook.”
I just think The Economist’s success is amazing.  They haven’t had to sensationalize or lie about anything, either, to grow like this.  Just good, truthful reporting.  Their editorials are more conservative than I’d like, but nothing outrageous.

Black Women in Vogue
For the July issue of Italian Vogue, Steven Meisel has photographed only black models. In a reverse of the general pattern of fashion magazines, all the faces are black, and all the feature topics are related to black women in the arts and entertainment. Meisel was given roughly 100 pages for his pictures.

Apple Says It Sold 5 Billion Songs; Could Movies Become A $100M Business? (Paid Content)
Apple announced [Thursday] that it has sold a total of about 5 billion songs, up from the 4 billion mark it announced in Jan this year. The more interesting bit is that it is now renting and purchasing over 50,000 movies every day, the company says. Apple has recently done deals with all of the major movie studios after a few years of trying to convince others besides Disney to come onto the service. At this rate, it will have sold or rented about 18.25 million movies on an annualized basis. Cynthia Brumfield does some basic calculations on the possible annual revenues for Apple: “iTunes movie sales are priced at $9.99 (for library titles) and $14.99 (for new releases). Rentals are priced at $2.99 (library) to $3.99 (new releases), with Apple TV HD versions of film rentals priced at $1 above the standard rental prices. Assuming that the average price of a sale/rental combined is around $6, then Apple is raking in around $110 million in movie revenue alone on an annual basis.”

CD Sales Fall Faster Than Digital Music Sales Rise. Or Do They? (by Stan Schroeder at Mashable)
I’m reading a report published by the International Herald Tribune about the decline of music sales on physical media such as CDs and DVDs, and I’m not sure what the record industry is whining about. Here’s a quote that boggles me: “In 2007… Physical sales of CDs and DVDs fell 13 percent to $15.9 billion. Sales of downloaded songs and mobile-phone ringtones rose 34 percent to $2.9 billion.“ Yes, I agree: looking at these numbers alone, the industry is not earning as much money as they did before. But take notice of the percentages. Physical sales = down 13 percent; digital sales = up 34 percent. At this exact rate of growth, in five years the revenue from digital sales will be 12.5 billion. At the exact rate of decline, physical sales will be down to 7.9 billion in five years. Add the two numbers together, and you get around 20.5 billion in overall revenue. Currently, this number is 18.8 billion.

LeapFrog system brings childrens’ books to life
Playing tag used to mean running around trying to touch someone so you no longer had to be “It.” Now, with the introduction of the LeapFrog Tag Reading System, playing tag means learning to read in an exciting high-tech manner.

‘Brain fitness’ market booming with Boomers
People worried about “senior moments” can now turn to an explosion of brain-assisting video games, puzzles that are said to ward off dementia and online tips that claim to train the brain.

Get your clicks with ‘Women’s Murder Club’ and ‘Princess Bride’
Not all gamers crave violent hack-and-slash adventures or fast-paced sports games.A growing segment of the playing population is turning to casual games, those downloadable try-before-you-buy PC titles that don’t require a 200-page manual or 12-button controller.

“Political Machine” puts you running for president
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Politics sometimes seems like a game, and that’s especially true in a U.S. presidential election year.

High-End Fashion Designed By You On StyleShake (Mashable)
[T]here’s a site that is trying to change the online fashion world. It’s called StyleShake and it might just be every woman’s dream come true. StyleShake lets anyone be their own fashion designer by allowing them to choose the fabrics they want and create their dream outfit. All you have to do is input your exact measurements and you’re good to go. The dress, top or skirt is designed by you and made to fit only you. Too good to be true? It gets better. StyleShake guarantees that you will be wearing your new outfit in 10 working days. This is possible thanks to Lectra, a digitizing measure service that enables the rapid creation of patterns for all types of garments.

With No NBA Finals, Prime-Time Ratings Drop 26%
Rash Report: Viewers Pull a Disappearing Act

Local TV Spending Down 1.6% in First Quarter
Network Up 1.7%

Strong Upfront Sales for Cable, Syndie
10% Increase for Cable, 4.5% for Syndication

At Yahoo, the Exodus Continues
For more than two years, senior employees have been leaving Yahoo at a steady, persistent trickle. The trickle has turned into a flood. After Yahoo’s announcement last week that the company had instead chosen to sign a search advertising partnership with Google, three executive vice presidents, two senior vice presidents and handful of other well-regarded employees have announced their intention to leave.

When Contextual Advertising Goes Horribly Wrong (Mashable)

Did the above banner ad really show up side-by-side with the rather gruesome story on CNN.com about severed feet washing up on shore in British Columbia? I haven’t been able to verify it with a few dozen page refreshes, but CNN does periodically insert 728×90 contextual ads in that slot, and it has sparked quite a discussion over on Reddit about contextual advertising (as well as links to plenty of rather humorous, obviously fake similar ad placements).
Click through for more examples.

Ustream to Begin Testing Overlay Ads in Live Video Streams (Mashable)
Attention all lifecasters: Ustream is set to start displaying advertisements in the streams. The popular live video chat service has partnered up with YuMe and Yahoo to show advertising in the form of text overlays…. According to Patrick Ross of UstreamTV, the overlays will be able to be closed by viewers and they are semi-transparent. The goal, according to UStream “is to develop a system of advertising that works technically [and] is acceptable to our viewers and broadcasters while helping us build a sustainable community.”
Click through to see an example.  It looks like the cable news networks’ screens—way too busy, for my taste.  I never look at anything but the picture in the middle.

Wanna Start Your *mail.com Service? You’ll Have To Buy It From Ad Farmers (Mashable)
For no intelligent reason other than curiosity, after Yahoo’s announcement that they’ll start offering free e-mail on the ymail.com domain, I’ve tried out all the other *mail.com domains to see what’s there. Maybe I was naive, but I expected a lot of various e-mail services, just like Gmail and Ymail. Wrong. Huge majority are simple ad farms.

12 Tools For Kickass Web Meetings (Mashable)
With rising gas prices and cheap airfare getting more difficult to find, companies and individuals are having to find different methods of holding meetings with business partners in other locations. Although Web meeting software has existed for quite some time, there seems to be more now than ever before. We’ve put together a collection of twelve online meeting options for every budget, whether you’re running a small business or a large corporation. These tools will let you do everything from sharing your desktop to showing demos with integrated VoIP teleconferencing and more.

MetroFi ending Wi-Fi service in Calif., Ore., Ill.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - With no buyers in sight, MetroFi Inc.’s free wireless projects in Portland and in cities in California and Illinois appear to be ending.

Uncertain Future For Some ISPs (by Paul Glazowski at Mashable)
In the U.S., Verizon Communications and AT&T in particular are pressing ahead with extensive fiber optic installations. If those efforts prove financially viable in the short run - which, given the solid performances shown by both competitors in the wired and wireless worlds, it seems that they very well might - those networks will then spread nationwide. And, well, the rest is fairly self-explanatory. To tell it briefly, because fiber channels facilitate large data transfers at very low cost, networks functioning wholly via the optical paradigm can pass savings on to consumers. Which would leave traditional cable operators struggling to compete…

While wireless media is an intriguing convenience for Web users, the home is surely where most data will be consumed via the Web, regardless of the presence of things like 3G and 4G. The focus on the home entertainment center won’t change. Not for a long time, anyway. Traditional phone and cable television companies have all learned that truth. But only a small number of service providers have correctly predicted and planned for what’s to come in 5 to 10 years. The rest will struggle, stumble, and some will fail.