Locked-Out Journalists Turn To Podcasting 146
An anonymous reader writes "An Interesting Canadian Press article is up on the Macleans website discussing locked out union journalists podcasting to stay on the air. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation locked out 5,500 unionized employees Aug. 15 over a contract dispute. Most of those walking the picket line are radio, TV and internet journalists and technicians. In the last few days, they've been cranking out podcasts - locked out folks in Fredericton, New Brunswick; Regina, Saskatchewan; Vancouver, British Columbia and other cities have all participated. Some have 'real news', music and interviews. Others are more propaganda-like. A whole batch of them are at www.cbcunplugged.com."
Two drink minimum (Score:5, Funny)
So basically it's no different than your normal CBC broadcast.
[rim shot]
Thank you.. I'll be here all week.
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:1, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the CBC has long forgotten that they are taxpayer funded organization, and have evolved into being a mouthpiece for special interest groups. http://www.cbcwatch.ca/ [cbcwatch.ca]
Although I admire the locked out reporters resourcefulness at getting their message out, I can hardly sympathize with this bunch of elitist, narrow minded idiots.
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:2, Insightful)
I take it, then, that you'd have more sympathy with a bunch of elitist, narrow minded idiots who's politics you agree with?
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:2)
But of course, he would like CBC TV replaced with the FOX channel and CBC Radio with Clear Channel + Rush Limbaugh. Then he would sing praises of the new arrangement being "fair and balanced" and "open minded", like, say, Ann Coulter.
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:2)
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:2)
Put that, whatever you are smoking, down or you might walk out of the window thinking its the way to the bathroom.
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:2)
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn those darn facts which have "left wing liberal" bias. And damn the CBC for reporting them! How dare they!
If they acted more like the BBC (yeah, they aren't perfect either)when it came to programming maybe they would have a larger viewing base
BBC also has a nasty habit of sticking to facts thus "yeah, they aren't perfect either" but it can be brown beaten by rigged "inquiries" and its executives
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:2)
Funny, I hear that same charge with the same vehemence made against the BBC (and against NPR in the U.S). Maybe the reason BBC seems more neutral to you is because the issues being reported on are less close to home.
Just to know what sort of thing you're talking about, can you name a specific issue that CBC reported on, which a truly unbiased media would have reported dif
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:2)
"CBC picket walker mentions teens across street cheering Canadian Idol fave."
"CBC personalites consider appearance on college radio."
Thanks for the chuckle. It appears we Canadians have a very low scandal threshold. Another bookmark for the Raelian crank file.
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Two drink minimum (Score:1)
I can see them... (Score:2, Interesting)
My father works for CBC and is part of the lockout (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My father works for CBC and is part of the lock (Score:1)
Bush says.. (Score:1, Insightful)
I hear there's oil, too. LET'S ROLL!!
RIP Quirks and Quarks (Score:1)
Re:RIP Quirks and Quarks (Score:1)
CPB? (Score:2, Funny)
This podcast made possible by listeners like you. Thank You!
Re:CPB? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:CPB? (Score:1)
the first one to ever mistake? i don't know (Score:1)
Procrasting (Score:3, Funny)
am I the only one who read "Locked-Out Journalists Turn To Procrasting"
Re:Procrasting (Score:1)
Re:Procrasting (Score:2)
Critical Mass? (Score:4, Interesting)
Turning a large group of professionals loose with a medium like this would make me very nervous if I owned a TV station! :)
Re:Critical Mass? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Critical Mass? (Score:2)
Slashdot, nor any other page with a "comment"-function was blogs before someone invented the word and made it fit roughly 50% of the nets webpages.
Web log = daily posts/rants/comments from a private person. Lets stick to that, shall we?
Re:Critical Mass? (Score:2, Insightful)
I love it.
A frequently updated website is called "blogging" and considered a whole new revolution again after over a decade.
Streaming/downloadable MP3s are called "podcasting" and considered a whole new revolution again after almost a decade.
What's next? Calling online gaming "active fantasy excercise" and claiming it's a new, revolutionary fad, too?
*eyeroll*
Speaking of which, I have yet to find a podcast that is worthwhile. I've tried listening to quite a f
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Critical Mass? (Score:1)
It would be about the same as sticking an mp3 on a server and having cronjobs that automatically downloaded the file every so often. So basically.. a podcast delivers an mp3 that you've subscribe to, when it's available... as long as you're connected to the internet and running the podcasting client in the background... and are too lasty to just punch in a single URL and click on a link to download it manual
Re:Critical Mass? (Score:2)
Podcasting is exactly the same. You podcasting client tracks a large number of sites and lets you know when something new is published.
Most of the people I know that are into podcasting have long commutes and they use the car time to catch up on various topics. Not a bad use of time... but I live 5 miles from work.
Re:Critical Mass? (Score:1)
Please excuse no html,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/downloadtrial/
No CBC link right now.
Re:Critical Mass? (Score:1)
Sure, it could - but once the journalists realize they can't make enough money to eat, they'll all turn around to bash it as a mindless, useless medium, with no journalistic integrity. Oh, wait...
Hmm (Score:5, Funny)
Defending Free Speech (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Defending Free Speech (Score:2)
Re:Defending Free Speech (Score:1)
While I agree that any self-published medium can be a good tool for free speech; I must say that the only thing worse than reading the drivel spewed by most "free speech activist" is hearing their whiny, annoying voices. Thank god we haven't "advanced" far enough for slashdot to offer audio comments.
Re:Defending Free Speech (Score:1)
"Nerds from space" was what it was called. You got to discover what squeaky pubescent voices Malda and the gang had.
Re:Defending Free Speech (Score:2)
Re:Defending Free Speech (Score:2)
Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:5, Informative)
It is not "streaming audio". Streaming requires enormous bandwidth in order to play in real time. A Podcast is downloaded and saved to the subscriber's disk for playback at a later time. It does not matter, therefore, if limited bandwidth means that a twenty minute episode will take fourty minutes to download
Streaming audio also has the same limitation that radio does, and which podcasting provides a solution to: the listener must tune in on the day and time of the broadcast in order to hear it. There are a large number of Public Radio programs which I enjoy but my schedule does not allow me to listen to live. Even more programs that I listen to are not offered by stations in my area. Podcasts allow me to subscribe to the feeds that I want and listen to them whenever and wherever I want, including on my mp3 player when I am away from my computer.Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:1)
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:1)
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:3, Insightful)
Which makes it even stupider to give it a new name like podcasting.
It's the original evil sourge of the internet known as "file downloading" - the progenitor of "file sharing!"
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:2)
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:1)
This personal access to pseudo-broadcast is the future. Great for libel/slander lawyers I'm sure, but how can you monitor all broadcasts? I'm sure that automated tools that check for occurrences of certain words in podcasts and flag ones that match will become a popular way to check for your company name (or your own name if you are lucky eno
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:2, Insightful)
So, in fact, it's downloading files, another term that existed long before the bloggers got hold of it...
Where exactly does the casting come into it?
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:2)
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:2)
Well, but the overall volume of data transferred is roughly the same. Most providers I know today bill in bits and not in bits per second.
A Podcast is downloaded and saved to the subscriber's disk for playback at a later time.
It does not matter, therefore, if limited bandwidth means that a twenty minute episode will take fourty minutes to download
So, it is an advantage that you first have to download everything
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:4, Informative)
I'm surprised that people on a geek site wave technical ideas away before even bothering to spend any time understand them. It is more than just an audio file on a web site somewhere.
What makes "podcasts" an improvement over just audio files on a web site somewhere is that you can subscribe to them using a podcast aggregator. An aggregator lets the user subscribe to a bunch of different feeds, when a feed has a new file, it automatically downloads the latest files. It then takes those files and puts them in the user's media library, and also can copy them to the user's portable audio device. Then the user can play the "recently added files" on the media player in the way to work while driving or riding.
That whole automated chain of events is what makes podcasting a vastly improved delivery system over manually checking every site, downloading every single file and them manually copying them to their portable audio device. I think it is a great improvement over radio. While most of radio, and most podcasts are garbage, with podcasts, I can pick and chose when and where I can play the recordings.
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:2)
In other words, because the files are automatically downloaded, before you listen, the technique can be used to watch full-screen video, or other high-bitrate media that users don't have the bandwidth to stream in real-time. Also, it can be used for disconnected devices that have no internet connection to stream at all.
So, no, it's not
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:2)
Yeah, it's even more basic. Us internet veterans call it "downloading a file".
The energy the tech industry invests in rebranding benign ideas into something flashy and new is laughable.
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:1)
Apple's laughing all the way to the bank and they didn't even come up with the word podcasting.
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:2)
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:2)
The energy the tech industry invests in rebranding benign ideas into something flashy and new is laughable.
The lack of energy some tech users invest in actually understanding the entire concept leads to ignorant statements like this.
I think podcast aggregators are to manually downloading files are fuel injection to manaully adjusting a model-T's carburetor. In that comparison, the engine gets the air and fuel, but FI is a lot sim
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:2)
Pfft... you whippersnappers don't know how good you have it. Us real veterans call it encapsulating data in ethernet frames.
Re:Hate the term "podcasting" (Score:1)
Back when I got my first MSDOS machine, I transferred all the stuff over from my CP/M system using three ordinary pieces of copper wire (transmit, receive, ground) between the machines.
Modem7 on the CP/M side, Procomm 2.4.2 on the 'Pee Cee' side.
There's audio? (Score:2)
Looked to me like a blog, with a bunch of CBC staff babbling about irrelevant trivia like most bloggers do. I can't see why anyone would want to download an audio version of the same inane comments that were in text.
Guess I just must be too old. I still phone people instead of texting, I read forums and news sites instead of blogs, and I expect "news" to have some validity and fact-checking behind it. Guess I'd have to be young and "cool" to understand why downloaded MP3 talk-only audio is a "podcast"
Bitrate hogs, too (Score:2)
I found the few MP3s that are actually on the site, and it seems that these goofs think you need 128KBit near-CD quality stereo MP3s for someone to talk! 20KBit mono is more than adequate for talk-only MP3s, and would save huge amounts of bandwidth.
Re:There's audio? (Score:1)
You're contradicting yourself.
Or do you go exclusively to 'three letter acronym' sites based on the old NBC/CBS/ABC hierarchy?
Didn't you know that old time journalists always said 'when you flunk out of Calculus, you can always switch to Journalism School' (meaning- all the high-falutin' 'integrity' blather from 'professional journalists' is hot air. The old time reporters started as copy b
FF extension please (Score:1)
My spoon is too big. (Score:3, Funny)
2. Put it on a website
3. ???
4. Postcast podpod castpost castpod!
Just remember its a lockout not a strike (Score:3, Interesting)
unionized? (Score:5, Funny)
Good thing too, you don't want those un-ionized employees going about stealing everybody's ions.
I wonder where they were locked though... In a Faraday cage, maybe?
Re:Charged Issue (Score:1, Funny)
Re:unionized? (Score:2, Funny)
Ionized Journalists (Score:3, Funny)
Re:unionized? (Score:2)
Improved ratings (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Improved ratings (Score:2)
Re:Improved ratings (Score:2)
"Play-by-play" commentators in most TV-worthy sports are just time-fillers/shills.
They are the equivalent to a sitcom's phony laugh track. The best example of this is professional wrestling, where the hype exceeds the performances to a ridiculous (over the top to the point of being an absurd sideshow) degree.
This won't change, as pre and post adolescent males are easily scammed into "xtreme!" stuff because of excess testosterone and the invulnerability phenomenon.
I'd love to see more sports broadcas
Re:Improved ratings (Score:2)
That's because we don't have to listen to Chris Walby anymore.
Inept website (Score:5, Insightful)
They've missed the important point: you have to podcast about something. You can't just podcast. Look at the links on the right -- do you see all the journalists? All listed right there. Hey! They're podcasting! Yes, but what the frack are you podcasting about? It's like looking at a TV guide that says:
7pm: Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping
8pm: Joe Flanigan, David Hewlett
9pm: Edward James Olmos, Katee Sackhoff
which, if you're not already fans of Stargate and Battlestar Galactica, gives you no information and doesn't compel you to watch the show.
Re:Inept website (Score:2)
you have to podcast about something. You can't just podcast.
They could have avoided that difficulty by starting web logs instead.
Re:Inept website (Score:1)
You know, the people who like listening to their own voices.
I went to Tech School at an old-line trade school that also had a Broadcasting division. We techies considered the 'Broadcast' students to be out and out flakes. The impression I got was that to be a 'broadcaster' the resonant quality of your cranium was more important that whatever else might be in it.
Re:Inept website (Score:4, Insightful)
See, and that's where you're wrong. It's like "blogs". You'd think they'd have to "blog" about something? Nope, it turns out "I'm blogging!" and "blogs are important!" are both perfectly sufficient messages to sustain a blog.
Your insistence that you need content to broadcast is outmoded thinking. Blogs and podcasts, and with them the internet, have moved beyond that. "New Journalism" doesn't need content, or quality, or accuracy, or informative value, or entertainment value; it just needs to be there. What we are observing here is a revolution, and its goal is to revolutionize. It's not revolutionizing anything in particular, mind you. It's just revolutionizing.
Re:Inept website (Score:1)
Re:Inept website (Score:2)
For example, about ten years ago in Finland cell phones began to be affordable for widespread consumer use. People got crazy about the new technology and started calling/texting each other from the most inappropriate places, often just because they could. They w
Re:Inept website (Score:2)
You're lucky. People in the US still haven't gotten over it.
Re:Inept website (Score:1)
Re:Inept website (Score:2)
Three Cheers for Labor Strife! (Score:3, Funny)
Now that the CBC reporters are locked out, the quality of CBC programming has improved immensely.
I love it!
Re:Three Cheers for Labor Strife! (Score:3, Interesting)
I love it!
I do too. But admittedly I didn't even know they were on strike until it was slashdot'ed. And I live in Canada!
Maybe if CBC closes down we will see some real investigative journalism and less liberal feel good. Bet the liberals increase CBC's budget before the next election.
Maybe I should see what is on the new CBC tonight.
Re:Three Cheers for Labor Strife! (Score:1)
Re:Three Cheers for Labor Strife! (Score:2)
Close down the TV broadcasting, fine. But leave Radio 1 and 2 alone.
I agree. CBC-TV is basically worthless except for the kids' shows. My kids really like them, and they're actually pretty good.
I listen to CBC radio a lot, and as long as you stay away from the occasional smug left-wing commentary, it's generally quite decent. On Radio 1, they're playing the "Best of..." past shows, and they're as good as new material.
Re:Three Cheers for Labor Strife! (Score:2)
Ah, I see you are a dedicated CBC viewer. Solidarity!
Re:Three Cheers for Labor Strife! (Score:2)
Re-running "best of" shows improves CBC because they really do pick the best shows, AND they seem to skip the annoying ones like "The Current".
subvert the MSM (Score:1)
However, they're probably cutting their own throats, since they're the folks benefiting most from the old way of doing things. They're propagating themselves out of jobs.
Which is fine by some of us. Probably not their intent. Watch them all scurry right back to 'credible big broadcast' mediums as soon as they can.
CBC and Podcasting (Score:1)
Re:Rackspace ads? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Rackspace ads? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Rackspace ads? (Score:2)
Re:Rackspace ads? (Score:2)
As for flash ads, they need to be burned a million times over.
Re:Rackspace ads? (Score:2)
Re:Rackspace ads? (Score:1)
Re:Rackspace ads? (Score:2)
Re:Canada News = Snooze (Score:2, Informative)
A quick search of Slashdot with the word Canada brings up 9 Canadian stories in the last two months alone (2 are sort of multinational) that have greater than 259 comments.
Instead of bitching about it, I suggest you simply don't click on Canadian-related stories.