archive.Joe Lamantia.com

Courtesy of the media awareness and activism group Freepress.net:
1. A handful of companies dominate
Five media conglomerates – Viacom, Disney, Time Warner, News Corp. and NBC/GE – control the big four networks (70% of the prime time television market share), most cable channels, vast holdings in radio, publishing, movie studios, music, Internet, and other sectors. [Consumers Union/Parents Television Council]
2. Big Media are a powerful special interest in Washington
Media companies intent upon changing the FCC media ownership rules have spent nearly $100 million on lobbying in the last 4 years. FCC officials have taken more than 2,500 industry-sponsored junkets since 1995, at a pricetag of $2.8 million. [Common Cause, Center for Public Integrity]
3. Consolidation fosters inferior educational programming.
After Viacom purchased the independent KCAL in Los Angeles, children’s programming plunged 89%, dropping from 26 hours per week in 1998 to three hours in 2003 (the minimum requirement set by Congress). TV stations air programs like NFL Under the Helmet and Saved by the Bell, claiming they meet educational programming requirements. [Children Now, FCC]
4. Cable rates are skyrocketing
Cable companies lobbied for and won deregulation in 1996, arguing that it would lower prices. Since then, cable rates have been rising at three times the rate of inflation. On average, rates have risen by 50%; in New York City, they’ve risen by 93.7%. [US PIRG]
5. Big Media profit from a money-dominated campaign finance system
In 2002, television stations earned more than $1 billion from political advertising – more than they earned from fast food and automotive ads. You were four times more likely to see a political ad during a TV news broadcast than an election-related news story. [Alliance for Better Campaigns]
6. Big Media use the public’s airwaves at no charge
The total worth of the publicly-owned airwaves that U.S. broadcasters utilize has been valued at $367 billion – more than many nations’ GDPs – but the public has never been paid a dime in return. And the broadcasters claim they can’t afford to be accountable to the public interest! [Alliance for Better Campaigns]
7. Independent voices are fading
Since 1975, two-thirds of independent newspaper owners have disappeared, and one-third of independent television owners have vanished. Only 281 of the nation’s 1,500 daily newspapers remain independently owned, and more than half of all U.S. markets are one-newspaper towns. [Writers Guild of America, East; Consumer Federation of America]
8. Consolidation is killing local radio
The number of radio station owners has plummeted by 34% since 1996, when ownership rules were gutted. That year, the largest radio owners controlled fewer than 65 stations; today, radio giant Clear Channel alone owns over 1,200. [FCC]
9. Consolidation threatens minority media ownership
Minority ownership – a crucial source of diverse and varied viewpoints – is at a 10-year low, down 14% since 1997. Today, only 4% of radio stations and 1.9% of television stations are minority-owned. [Writers Guild of America, East]
10. The free flow of idea and information is being stymied
No copyrighted work created after 1922 has entered the public domain – an incubator for new ideas – due to corporate-sponsored legislation extending copyright terms. If laws being considered today had been in effect a few generations ago, you wouldn’t have access to products such as VCRs and copy machines. [U.S. Copyright Office, FCC, Electronic Frontier Foundation]

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It’s my plea­sure to announce the recent appear­ance of Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture in two very dif­fer­ent and most unex­pected places.
The first is in lead­ing pol­icy jour­nal For­eign Affairs, where the term is men­tioned in a let­ter to the Edi­tor by David Hoff­man, Pres­i­dent of Internews in the July / August 2003 issue. Why is it impor­tant that IA appear in a pol­icy jour­nal? For­eign Affairs is legit­i­mately one of the most influ­en­tial pub­li­ca­tions in the world, in that it con­sti­tutes a (nom­i­nally — decide for your­self as always) non-partisan and pub­lic forum for cur­rent and for­mer world lead­ers, lead­ing polit­i­cal the­o­rists, and active mem­bers of major gov­ern­ment and non-government orga­ni­za­tions to dis­cuss, debate, and decide national and inter­na­tional pol­icy. Fro exam­ple, while many peo­ple both in Amer­ica and abroad were taken by sur­prise when Pres­i­dent Bush announced his administration’s doc­trine of pre-emptive strikes against poten­tially threat­en­ing coun­tries, read­ers of For­eign Affairs would have seen Con­doleeza Rice out­line her vision of the new Amer­i­can world order in some detail dur­ing the cam­paign — before Bush was elected, and she assumed the role of National Secu­rity Advi­sor. Hoffman’s use of the term infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture (pg. 210) is broadly inclu­sive — he says, “Iraq now faces many chal­lenges, among them to rebuild a cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture and to train a new gen­er­a­tion of jour­nal­ists who can report fairly, objec­tively, and inde­pen­dently on that soci­ety.” — and the nature of his orga­ni­za­tion as in Internet-based free media project means it is less remark­able that he would employ the term than some­one out­side the Inter­net com­mu­nity like Made­line Albright, but it is nonethe­less sig­nif­i­cant that IA is now seen as crit­i­cal in a polit­i­cal con­text. Too often we focus on the busi­ness, aca­d­e­mic, or even aes­thetic con­texts of IA. Yet if Infor­ma­tion Archi­tec­ture is to be as gen­uinely rel­e­vant a field as I sus­pect a major­ity of we who are its prac­ti­tion­ers believe it capa­ble of being in the very near future, then we must adov­cate for it’s vis­i­bil­ity and effi­cacy on the polit­i­cal level.

The sec­ond note­wor­thy appear­ance is in my home town of Can­ton, Ohio, in the form of a list­ing on Monster.com seek­ing can­di­dates for a full time job open­ing inside a local adver­tis­ing agency. Can­ton is a medium-sized (pop­u­la­tion 90k) pre­dom­i­nantly blue-collar for­mer heavy man­u­fac­tur­ing cen­ter known for two things; the Pro­fes­sional Foot­ball Hall of Fame, and a remark­ably low cost of liv­ing (for exam­ple, a full 62% lower than New­ton, MA, where I’m rent­ing at the moment, accord­ing to the salary cal­cu­la­tor avail­able on Monster.com). The for­mer means that for the one week each year pre­ced­ing the induc­tion of new mem­bers into the Hall of Fame, Can­ton becomes the cap­i­tal of the pro­fes­sional foot­ball uni­verse. The lat­ter means that the sub­urbs north of Can­ton have become a rapidly grown­ing bed­room com­mu­nity for upper mid­dle class com­muters work­ing in the Akron and even Cleve­land metro areas. By indus­try base, demo­graph­ics, geog­ra­phy, and cul­ture, Can­ton is quite lit­er­ally the last place that I ever expected see a post­ing for an Infor­ma­tion Architect’s posi­tion. And yet there it is: the agency in ques­tion (Innis Mag­giore) hap­pens to be one of the fastest grow­ing adver­tis­ing firms in Ohio, and a large pro­por­tion of those involved in the cre­ation and man­age­ment of infor­ma­tion spaces now rec­og­nize the indis­pens­able nature of IA.

I called Innis Mag­giore to ask them about the open­ing, but haven’t been able to speak with them yet to find out how they iden­ti­fied the need, how many appli­cants they’ve had, and what level of qual­ity the appli­cants demon­strate. I’ll post any­thing I learn further.