On a hot summer day like today, back in my more youthful days, heading to the library was one way to combat the heat. I don’t think the library even had air conditioning, it was just a huge old stone building, built back in the day where architects sited building to take advantage of what the topography and seasons offered. The stacks, deep in the bowels of the library, housed the books that weren’t all that popular with the public, but that’s where ancient tomes on Hitites and giant squids could be found, instead of displays pimping the lastest incarnation of the “Joy of …” something, and it was cool. Just not hip. But libraries, according to recent news reports, are trying to appeal to the hipsters, and not just a cool place to hang out at on a hot summer day.

These days, as one Salon writer opined, “Like trucker hats and last week’s version of the iPhone, libraries have an image problem. Wait, did you say libraries? Those places with the passed out homeless people and the twenty-year-old editions of the “World Book”?”

So totally uncool. But the gist of the article though had more to to do with the next “big thing”in libraries.

A Tuesday Associated Press story on the runaway success of a Dallas library located in a downtown shopping mall shows what can go right when you put libraries in the path of receptive consumers. In just two years, the NorthPark children’s library has blossomed into a bustling local hub that checks out more books than branches eight times its size. And Dallas isn’t the only city innovating the look of the seemingly stodgy institutions. A Wichita library rests inside a grocery store, and the Princeton library offers a bookshop, café and that most irresistible bourgeois hangout — a greenmarket. Elsewhere, libraries “have built cafes, provided downloadable books or installed drive-through windows.”

Coupled with this timely Boston Globe article on the art of studying, something I wasn’t in need of back in my more youthful days, which appretnly jives with the decline and fall of studying.

According to time-use surveys analyzed by professors Philip Babcock, at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Mindy Marks, at the University of California Riverside, the average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today’s average student hits the books for just 14 hours.

The decline, Babcock and Marks found, infects students of all demographics. No matter the student’s major, gender, or race, no matter the size of the school or the quality of the SAT scores of the people enrolled there, the results are the same: Students of all ability levels are studying less.

Yegads Captain Obvious, who has time to study anything these days? Why it requires reading stuff. Since I liked to read books wholly unrelated to whatever coursework I was taking, I managed to avoid studying and learn something. I think. But we do have an interesting intersection of technology, habits and productivity to check out.

The easy observation is that somehow all this new fangled technology is killing off studying. But not so fast.

According to the skeptics of the findings, there is one other notable change: Today’s students are working with more efficient tools when they do finally sit down to study. They don’t have to bang out a term paper on a typewriter; nor do they need to wander the stacks at the library for hours, tracking down some dusty tome.

“A student doesn’t need to retype a paper three times before handing it in,” said Heather Rowan-Kenyon, an assistant professor of higher education at Boston College. “And a student today can sit on their bed and go to the library, instead of going to the library and going to the card catalog.”

That’s true, Babcock and Marks agree. But according to their research, the greatest decline in student studying took place before computers swept through colleges: Between 1961 and 1981, study times fell from 24.4 to 16.8 hours per week (and then, ultimately, to 14). Nor do they believe student employment or changing demographics to be the root cause. While they acknowledge that students are working more and campuses attract students who wouldn’t have bothered attending college a generation ago, the researchers point out that study times are dropping for everyone regardless of employment or personal characteristics.

So what is going on? How people learn is a field of study fraught with more snake oil than the victorian era phrenologists. But the reality is that, like the proverbial snowflake, no individual has the same learning style. For all the modern era has to offer, we still seem stuck on trying to solve all the intricacies of learning by a one size fits all solution. In Laredo Texas, population 250k, the last chain book store closed, leaving Laredo with no bookstore, which naturally people there bemoaned. Just another data point about where that thing called a book fits in these days with the larger issue of just how are people learning.

One week ago today, Dan Malloy officially became a candidate for Governor.
Video:

Malloy continued his torrid pace of appearances, appearing on WFSB’s Face the State, answering questions from panelists Daniela Altimari of The Hartford Courant, Ted Mann of The Day, and host Dennis House.
Video (thanks to ctblogger):

Malloy’s Sunday appearances included a conversation with Connecticut Newsmakers host Tom Monahan.
Video (thanks again to ctblogger):

There’s more after the jump…
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There is a lot in the press about Linda McMahon the last couple days. McMahon’s campaign has, relative to what one can meaningfully spend on a statewide political campaign in Connecticut (about five million dollars will do the job, and its maybe eight million dollars tops), an unlimited amount of money. Her fortune comes from the family business, the very definition of stage-managed storytelling media companies, World Wrestling Entertainment. People tend to go with what they know and, sure enough, McMahon’s pursuit of the Senate seat vacated by Chris Dodd is a tightly controlled marketing campaign, with the star act’s every move – and everything in her vicinity – meticulously attended to by her handlers.

But McMahon and her campaign are not escaping scrutiny. From the cutting edge of online local media right here in Connecticut, to the original innovator that brought us the 24-hour news cycle, Linda2010 is generating controversy.

Start with the local: Valley Independent Sentinel reporter Joe Cole attempted to ask McMahon a coupla questions at a public appearance in Seymour last week, and McMahon “press wrangler” Suzan Bibisi reportedly shut it down. The campaign followed up with a boiler-plate email response to the reporter’s question; followed by a ham-handed attempt to intimidate the local guys with a press release, quoted in a report by veteran investigative journalist Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent:

“Valley Independent Sentinel Report Involved in Head-On Collision with Reality, the Facts,” the release’s headline read.
“The Valley Independent Sentinel’s claim is demonstrably false, contradicted by scores of interviews Linda has given, including more than a dozen hour-long interviews with reporters and editorial boards nationally and in Connecticut,” the release stated, listing selected interviews her campaign has arranged.

The skinny: Gilded Senate Campaign – 0, Gritty Local Reporters – 2.

Then, CNN‘s Anderson Cooper 360 launched its new series on campaign spending – Cost of Entry – with an expose’ on none other than Linda McMahon. Have a peek:

The, uh, money quote:

The Center for Responsive Politics says 40 out of 51 Congressional candidates that spent half a million dollars or more on their 2008 campaigns lost, or quit. Proof, perhaps, that even the richest person in the world needs a message voters believe, not just a good act.

Meanwhile, note that former CT02 Congressman and contender for the GOP nomination Rob Simmons got some nice “earned media” in the CNN piece.
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Steve Collins was not going quietly into the night.

Back on November 11, 2008, I posted an installment to a thread I revisit occasionally (like now), categorized on this blog under Media, wherein I sporadically chronicle the chronic condition of traditional media, specifically print media, here in your state, CT. The post was entitled Connecticut print media about to shrink again?, and it referred to a story on Steve Collins’ blog about the imminent demise of Steve’s employer, the Bristol Press, along with a bunch of other holdings of the bankrupt Journal Register company. I was sure that both Steve and his wife, who also worked for the Press, were goners.

Turns out, Steve had a bit more fight in him than he let on. Read A look back on the effort to save the Press on Steve’s blog, wherein he discloses his December 4, 2008 letter on the subject to state Commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development, Joan McDonald.

Worth reading.

Due to a prior commitment I will be unable to attend the right-in-my-wheelhouse event tonight at The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford; “a screening of a critical new documentary on the future of newspapers, “On Deadline: Is Time Running Out For The Press?” followed by a panel discussion led by WNPR’s John Dankosky with some of those involved in this changing trade.” I’m going to have to settle for the airing of the film on CPTV 8 p.m. on Thursday or 10 p.m. on Friday.
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After a period of uncertainty over the future of the most widely read political blog in Connecticut, Chris Bigelow (who posted under the byline Ghengis Conn), announced on the blog that the end had come. Bigelow had departed from personally maintaining the blog at the time of the municipal elections this past November to “spend more time with his family”.

Just kidding.

GC explained that he had found his attention turning to other interests and obligations, including the fact that he was spending more of his time in western Massachussetts, and that he didn’t have the passion for the project – which was a hobby – required to do it to the level of quality that he wished.

A few days prior to Bigelow’s February 1 announcement, former GOP State Central Committee Executive Director and current Yankee Institute Policy Director Heath Fahle announced that he had accepted a gig writing opinion for the well-respected CT NewsJunkie, operated by the team of Doug Hardy and lead reporter and editor-in-chief Christine Stuart (they are husband and wife, making this something like the equivalent of a mom-and-pop shop). Fahle had been the principal contributor from the right on CTLP, and (with the departure of Bigelow) functioned as the de facto operator of CTLP along with Sarah Littman, a principal front-page contributor to CTLP from the left.

A couple of comments about this development, from a sometime participant in the evolving on-line media world. First, what Bigelow did was truly an impressive accomplishment, and at the same time an unintended consequence of a simple and important activity – wanting to share his work making political maps, which he did for his own edification and amusement (as he explained to me back at the very beginning of his blog when there were – I kid thee not – something like sixteen views on the blog’s counter). There is nothing I can add to the ocean of analysis and comment about the medium and the impact of the web log (blog) platform, the story of CTLocalpolitics speaks with the eloquence of a motion picture picture to that.

That said, I view CTNewsjunkie and sister site the New Haven Independent as natural steps beyond the personal blog that CTLocalpolitics began as and, in the end, ultimately was. CTNJ is owned and operated by people who are perhaps no more passionate about their work than their colleagues at CTLP, but happen to be professional journalists and entrepreneurs. These folks are at the leading edge of those engaged with (amongst other things) answering a big question: how one can devote the time to work in this genre and do it well, and still pay the rent and put food on the table?

So for me it is both natural and poetic that a professional political operative is moving to this venue and that this small development signals the demise of a personal project of self-expression that became something that professional journalists regarded as of nearly professional quality.

Into the space that CTLP helped create have already moved several projects in addition to CTNJ & NHI, including CTCapitolReport.com – a Drudge-like amalgamator of political headlines, and links to all manner of online sources for content political – the just-launched CTMirror.com, and a spectrum of hyper-local blogs, special interest blogs, opinion blogs… Really, the milieu defies categorization and I am incidentally a bit bemused by the meta-stocrats impotence in coming to grips with it.

The soundstage belongs for now to the performers and line producers. We’ll just have to see what happens next and, perhaps, contribute to the next scene.
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It’s not like Cablevision hasn’t figured out that they have all the negotiating power. Last� year Cablevision paid Scripps, the owner,� twenty-five cents a household for Food Network and HGTV. Wouldn’t you like to pick and choose the channels you want to watch at twenty-five cents a month?

Cablevision says they don’t want to pay an exorbitant increase in fees, well who could blame them, and so they refuse to budge on the pricing issue.

But there is something you can do about it, go to iloveFOODNETWORK.com and iloveHGTV.com for information on how to encourage Cablevision to put those channels back on.

Cablevision wants you to forget that they played this game with MSG and YES networks not so long ago. When YES network challenged their cost structure, not enough people unsubscribed from Cablevision and force Cablevision to make a deal with YES. And why do they think that? It all gets back to the Triple Play deal, where they have you with Internet Broadband and telephone service. Cablevision, according to industry reports, has a 65% penetration of triple play subscribers in its 3 million subscriber base. That’s pretty hefty. And they know, because they make it so, how much of a pain it is to walk away form your phone number let alone Internet and television all at once.

But back to Scripps, in a press release they said:

The 2009 Beta Cable Subscriber Study found that the average cable subscriber believes Food Network is worth $1.03 per month and HGTV is valued at 73 cents per month, which is considerably more than Cablevision has been paying for the networks’ programming and more than Scripps Networks Interactive is asking on behalf of the two brands in current contract negotiations.

So despite the full page ads that they are buying in local media, Cablevision isn’t dealing with the the reality of media entertainment today. People don’t want high priced bundled services, they want to pick and choose their programming and are willing to pay for it. Cablevision knows this and seems to be mapping out a strategy to keep content costs down at all costs.

Apparently Cablevision is also in denial that their subscribers are pissed about this. There are reports out in blog land of abusive calls being made to Cablevision, and is officially saying there is no increase in call volume about the dropped channels. That would be a typical Cablevision response. They don’t bother to read the comments posted in the media because they know people aren’t really going to go anywhere else.

There’s a new news site in the state that looks like it will deliver the capitol news that the news media has been letting slip away in non coverage land. Add it to your bookmarks, The CT mirror should be launching soon. Former Courant reports, Mark Pazniokas and Michael Regan lead up the reporter side of the new venture. Westporter James Cutie heads up the business side of the operation, under the umbrella of The Connecticut News Project.

Their board of directors is an interesting mix of policy and news people. No tech people, which might be a problem in this brave new world. For some reason they haven’t figured out to reach out to CT News Junkie, where Christine Stuart does what they plan to do.

But then there’s that generational divide. The web savvy versus the old media.

The Stamford Advocate has a spiffy new web site. Finally someone with a sense of design has taken control over there. But what happened to the Norwalk edition? Sadly a 404 when www.norwalkadvocate.com is typed in. The Stamford Advocate has also brought comments back.

Meanwhile, not to leave our hometown news journal out of it, The Hour has joined the blog world, with their�newshound blog.

The media business is still a precarious one. There’s a real need for quality journalism, and yet the old way of developing ad dollars to support print publications is a hard one, when most people get their news online, and not necessarily by visiting web pages. Advertisers know this, and are seeking new ways of reaching new customers all the time.

The Stamford Advocate has basically conceded expanding their audience while The Hour has grasped that they need to widen their audience. My prediction is that The Hour has a better shot at navigating 2010 then the Advocate.

Whatever it is about Chris Powell, I find myself noticing his editorials a lot. Here is the first example of Connecticut’s professional press, to the best of my knowledge, calling Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell out for doing what it is she always does.

Excerpt:

… Rell’s time for mere posturing is up. To get a budget the governor now will have to start spending the political capital she has amassed in the opinion polls. It apparently will be spent to appease the government class …

Powell cannot be accused of having a liberal bias.

Worth reading. Continue Reading

Local talent.

Preovolos is a photojournalist and blogs – well – about food for The Advocate. Continue Reading