Category: Charlotte Southern

Benkler talks about inventors and /or companies innovating less when they get more protection because protection “increase the costs that current innovators have to pay on existing knowledge more than it increases their ability to appropriate the value of their own contributions. I asked if this was a an issue of less innovation or just a delay in innovation. I think it depends on the situation. Most people innovate to make money, of course there are a few out there that do it out of the goodness of their hearts, but most do it for the money. Pharmaceuticals are a great example. Yes, there are patents so people can make a generic of your company’s drug for X number of years but that doesn’t mean that you can not expand of the idea. For example, birth control pills. I tried to look up how many different brands there are and with a cursory search I found 27 different pills in three categories. All of them once had a patent that has or has not already expired. Thats a lot of choice for women, and these are just the pill form. So just because one company got a patent for one drug does not mean that the other drug companies gave up, or even waiting for the patent to expire, they got to innovating and created more competition. This is interesting because in this case innovation is not hindered by costs, but driven by profits. On the other hand there are drugs that are not being innovated because there is not enough profit involved. Why come up for a vaccine for malaria when the only people who need it live in developing countries? Travelers already purchase pills before they go on vacation so the market where there is profit is already covered. These companies make choices based on profit and I think sometimes this is what hinders innovation.

I think that our discussion of open source was interesting. I do believe that everyone should have access to the internet and to information. On the other hand, I do think that someone has to pay for it. I am a visual journalist and as much as I would like to work and spread perspective through my stories for free, I can’t. I need to make money so I can keep doing what I do. I do give work away and work cheaply for non-profits but I have to balance that with corporate work which is getting harder and harder in this economy. Its great that Benkler gives away his book on the internet but he can afford to do that because he works in academia. No he is not profiting directly from the book but by working at Yale he was basically getting paid to write it. Yale, and all schools, want their professors to be published so they give them time to write and pay them to work at their institution.

I think it is ridiculous that newspapers make so little money from selling the work of their employees and all the new contracts want the freelancer to give full rights to the newspaper. I really think that it would be better to let the individuals profit from their syndicated work. It would create more drive for the individual to do well because doing well could mean bonuses now and then. At the Miami Herald if you are a staffer the newspaper owns all the rights in exchange for a steady (or what used to be) job that pays a certain salary, provides health benefits, pays for expenses, and allows for paid vacation time. Ok, I understand that. You get a confirmed job and they get your content. Now they want freelancers to give up the same rights. Freelancers who dont have daily work with the company, get paid less, have no health benefits, and have to pay expenses. This is out of line. I would argue that when the work of staff photographers is sold to an outside company that the individual photographer at least get a portion of what the images are sold for but they don’t. They just get a pat on the back, which maybe when you are a staffer you dont care as much, until that image is sold for a quarter of a million dollars. . .

Benkler talks about inventors and /or companies innovating less when they get more protection because protection “increase the costs that current innovators have to pay on existing knowledge more than it increases their ability to appropriate the value of their own contributions.” I understand this to a point but isnt this why patents expire? Drug companies want to make money so they come up with some drug to make money and get a patent. Then when the patent expires other drug companies make the same thing and sell it for less. Isn’t it just a circle? The original drug company can use the profits they made from holding the original patent to come up with a new drug and make more money. Is this really an issue of less innovation as a whole or just a delay in new innovations?

Before this statement he said that “any new information good or innovation builds on existing information, then strengthening intellectual property rights increases the prices that those who invest in producing information today must pay to those who did so yesterday, in addition to increasing the rewards an information producer can get tomorrow.” It seems like as cost goes up so does innovation? Is this the way we shoud be innovating or is there another theory that would be cheaper and more productive?

Benkler says that daily newspapers are not copyright-dependent although they are a market-based information production industry. If companies are making less than 3.5% of profits (on the high side) from syndication of people’s work then why give people contracts where they want to won everything? Wouldnt it be a better economic model to let the content producers benefit from money that could be made from syndication making them happier employees and allowing information to be spread through alternative means?

I think that agenda setting takes place at all publications but I think some are more conscious of what they are doing than others. I have worked for a number of publications who tried hard to be objective and tell lots of different stories and not just the most popular ones for their readers. Meghan wrote that she worked for a magazine who decided to change her list of salons to cover since the ones that she originally picked were not advertisers. I have never seen this happen in a newsroom that I have been part of. First of all, the advertising people and the editorial people are on different floors and dont really communicate with each other. Also, people are really aware of what it looks like when we right stories about people that advertise heavily. That doesnt mean a story (positive or negative) doesnt pop up now and again about someone who advertises a lot (Macys for example) but no one does it on purpose. I think the biggest problem that comes about is the “media circus” that can come about for certain stories. Everyone is really competitive and wants to get the story first. So, if one station is going to do a story everyone else wants to beat them to it or just do a better job reporting it. Another reason for a smaller story to get blown out of proportion in recent years is the fact that there is less manpower. With the number of layoffs, buyouts, and budget cuts organizations are looking to their partners for content. This means that a tv station, radio station, and newspaper will run the same story. What is more disturbing to me is the sharing of content between organizations that used to compete against each other. In South Florida The Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, and Palm Beach Post all share content. The written stories are not always exactly the same but the pictures might be, or vice versa. The lack of competition makes me wonder if quality content will start lacking. People need a little bit of healthy competition to keep their standards high. Because of the economy along with overall industry changes I think it is hard to keep a balance between running stories that are popular and others that are important, but maybe not as popular.

“As the infusion of mass media information into a social system increase, segments of the population with higher socioeconomic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower segments, so that the gap in knowledge between these segments tends to increase rather than decrease.” I think the best way to level the playing field is through research and money. We need to figure out how different demographics get their information and figure out a way to distribute information across the social economic lines. I think this will take money because most likely its all going to be over the internet and you need a computer or mobile device to get the internet. But, with the speed of technology maybe internet will get so cheap that everyone could afford it and the problem is solved. Of course who knows how future technology will change distribution of media in the future.

Media is becoming too commercialized. It seems like it is getting more expensive in some ways to get access to the news. A newspaper used to cost 25cents and could be read by many people as it is passed along. It is getting to the point where people have to go online to get a lot of content. Although much of it is free you have to get that internet connection. I am really torn because part of me thinks that information should be free but another part of me thinks that people should pay for content (like people pay for cable television). Newspapers were cash cows back in the day. Even as little as ten years ago newspapers had so much money they didnt know what to do with it. It is because they have not figured out how to adapt to the internet quickly enough, and more importantly utilize advertising that they are having problems. I hope that it gets figured out in the near future because I think that the media is an important part of society and journalists should get paid to produce content.

Agenda setting is said to come from “the traditions of journalism, the daily interactions among news organizations, and the continuous interactions of new organizations with numerous sources and their agendas,  especially including policy makers in government.” How do we stop small stories from turning into a media circus? It seems like small stories are being escalated way beyond what is necessary because if one TV station runs the story, then all of them have to. Then newspapers write stories, then magazines, blogs, etc. Then, some of the bigger stories seem to get left behind because of this escalation of something else. How do we create a balance?

The knowledge gap hypothesis: “As the infusion of mass media information into a social system increase, segments of the population with higher socioeconomic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower segments, so that the gap in knowledge between these segments tends to increase rather than decrease.” How do we level the playing field? What would be the best theories to study and research methods to use to get started?

It seems to me that media is becoming too commercialized. The commodification of culture theory treats information as a commodity to sell instead of a right of knowledge. How can we make adjustments in society so that not all information turns into a product to sell?

The knowledge gap hypothesis, spiral of silence, and propaganda model all talk about how news media excludes certain members of society. People with more wealth and education use the media more and mainstream media tends to talk about the most popular options, leaving out alternative views.

A lot of people believe that through the internet and rapidly growing technology that we are making it easier to access more media and learn about more views.  But for who? This is true for the people teaching and taking classes at Elon, but what about the lower socio-economical bracket that does not necessarily have instant access to the way that news is being distributed now, or will be in the future.

Is getting rid of print media actually making the gaps in society more pronounced? Yes, there are public libraries and some public schools that allow everyone free internet access but how hard should people have to try to get access to knowledge that other people have on the tips of their fingers? I believe that people have to want to gain knowledge and work for it but, are we making it harder for a certain bracket in society by getting rid of 25cent newspapers that are at very corner shop and instead making people make their way to the library that may be a good distance from their homes?

How do we adapt to the new technology while at the same time make media readily available to the masses?