High-Speed Peacock

When I was an eager, young intern at NBC news, my job was to monitor the wires for breaking stories. One day, I spotted a report on a helicopter crash somewhere in the midwest, and so I alerted the news director. Just as I started gathering contact info and details, my supervisor told me the story was killed. Why? Because the helicopter engine that failed was made by General Electric, the parent company of NBC. A small, yet disturbing example of the hazards of media consolidation. So I did what any ambitious, idealistic intern would do... grabbed my coat and tagged along on a breaking news story about how folks in Sherman Oaks were dealing with the first drizzle of the year.

I'll admit I am a little obsessed with the insipid web of media consolidation, maybe to a fault. I am the annoying kind of media consumer who is vigilantly on the lookout for subtle product placement or manipulative messages. Watching TV with me is kind of like sitting next to the guy with the peanut allergy on an airplane.

(I'll let you ponder that one for a moment.)

Television, movies, newspapers, books, and the internet are our primary sources of information and entertainment. They are meant to serve the public interest and provide diverse voices, viewpoints and programming. When a few ginormous corporations control most of our sources of information, local, minority and independent owners are pushed out of the market.

Thus, the pending merger of Comcast and NBC Universal makes me very uncomfortable.

Let's take a quick look at who we are dealing with here. Comcast has 23.9 million cable customers and 15.3 million high-speed internet customers, making it both the largest cable company and the largest residential broadband provider.

NBCU owns 27 broadcast television stations and a myriad of cable stations, including Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen and USA Networks, not to mention Universal Pictures/Home Video/Cable/Theme Parks, Focus Features, Hulu.com, among others.

Combined, these two huge companies make over $50 billion in annual revenue. This marriage would be the beginning of an unprecedented media consolidation with an inevitable domino effect. The other huge media and telecom companies will have to compete. Among Disney, News Corp., Time Warner and AT&T, these guys will strike up a couple more mega-deals to fill in the rest of the pie. Sorry independent content creators - always the bridesmaids, never the brides.

This pending merger is disconcerting, particularly at a time when the rules of traditional media are in such disarray. The future of the internet is being decided right now. It could go the way of a free and open medium, or fall into the hands of a few with tremendous market power.

I dread the day when we reflect back on the good times of Net Neutrality, when ISPs didn't speed up or slow down online content based on its source and who pays them the most. And thanks to Comcast, we got a taste of this predicament. In 2007, the AP confirmed that Comcast was blocking internet file sharing by posing as its users and sending messages to actual users that would tell them to stop communicating. Sneaky bastards.

So imagine you are surfing the net and want to watch CSI Kandahar, a CBS show, but the speed is as slow as dial-up circa 1998. A pop-up ad for Bravo's Real Housewives of Baghdad appears. You click and the program streams smoothly and at lightening speed.

The conflicts of interest go on. Subscription-based TV distributors like Direct TV pay content providers like NBCU for the right to carry their cable channels. If their fees go up, that burden will get passed on to the consumer. Bundled cable/internet/wireless bills will rise.

How is this not vertical integration? Why aren't antitrust violations being scrutinized?

Well, the reason is obvious. The media and telecommunications industries are second to drug companies in how much money they spend on federal lobbying.

But hey, maybe there is a silver lining to all of this. If you have internet or cable troubles, who's to say Steve Carell won't show up to fix the problem.

Stop wasting your damn money!

If I watch one more co-worker walk into this office with a $5 latte I am going to scream. I don’t care if they purchased the smaller size and it really cost $3.

We are in a recession. Don’t you think it’s time that we get wise about our money?

Consider these tips and keep some change in your pockets, please!

Buy a reusable water bottle and fill it with filtered water. Hell. Buy five reusable water bottles, fill them with filtered water and grab one each morning when you head to the office. While you’re at it, brew your own coffee and steep your own tea. You can use a travel mug. And you shouldn’t even be drinking carbonated soft drinks, so that takes care of the beverages.

Entertain yourself for free with your library card and the Internet. There are web sites that offer films, documentaries and television shows for free (get it while it lasts). There’s SnagFilms, Hulu, Joost (to name a few), and many of your favorite network shows will have full episodes on their web sites of all the shows that you missed while you were wasting your money on that latte. And since we’re heading into summer, look for (free) theater or concerts in the park.

Re-gift with pride. You can always give a book without ever feeling guilty that it's used, because it's new to the recipient. Just make sure that the pages are not filled with highlighting, that every other word isn’t underlined and that the margins are not decorated with your thoughts.

Skip the valet. Not only will you save money by actually parking your car yourself, you will also get some exercise.

Cook. Buy real food at a store or farmers market, bring it home and cook it. If you’re feeling really ambitious, plant some food.

What are your money-saving tips? Share them here.

A Voice for the Voiceless

There is one thing all leaders have in common. They’ve all stood in a room and were mocked for what they believed in. More importantly, they left that room and continued to believe.

In October, I attended a CNN roundtable discussion on the 2008 election. Naturally, the conversation led to the economy and its downturn. Toward the end, I mustered up the nerve to ask the respected panel full of news executives and respected journalists a question about over-reporting. My question, perhaps poorly phrased, was how to keep the audience interested in a story that was so over-reported. How do you get people to care?

And the laughter came. “I think people do care, you may be the only who doesn’t.”
“You can’t force someone to care, you can only tell them the story,” said the president of a popular political blog.

I wanted to scream at him, but the mic had already been passed back to the host. The panel full of privileged individuals from generations of wealthy families all agreed that you can’t force the audience to care about issues. I wanted to tell them that they were wrong. I wanted to lecture them on the responsibility of journalists to draw the viewers in and make them care. But I knew they would think I was naïve and perhaps blinded by foolish optimism.

After that morning, I believed that true change started with anger. I was so angry at myself, at that room, at that CNN president. I was angry at the ignorance and the audacity to just brush away my ideas as if they meant nothing. But only a few weeks later when I saw Barack Obama win the presidency, the anger faded and hope was reborn.

In my work as a journalist, I’ve met people who have tuned out politics and journalism completely. The two fields are remarkably similar in how they treat the average individual. In the words of Edward R. Murrow, "The American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry's program planners believe." If you treat the audience as if they have a valuable opinion, they will express it. Some may go overboard, but others will most likely appreciate being treated as thinking individuals. President-elect Obama certainly appealed to the average person. New voters turned up at the polls in record numbers. Citizens who couldn’t care less about politics were all of a sudden joined together in believing they could unite and change the norms that have been accepted for centuries.

I pray each day that the same thing will happen in journalism. Today, when we turn on the news, you don't see diversity. The reporters may be diverse, but the stories are not. As an Asian woman, I really can’t see this country with an Asian president. I can’t even see an Asian senator. Asians are the fastest growing minority next to Hispanics. Many go to college and make great lives for themselves. But many live in poverty. With lack of money comes lack of opportunity. That is why I chose to be a journalist. Giving a voice to the voiceless is how change comes about. I’ve done stories on Hispanic families whose lives are in such despair that they can never imagine what it’s like to own a home much less lose one in a bad economy. I met a black mother who lost her son in a gang-related drive-by shooting. When I pitched that story to a news station, they brushed it off as old news not worth reporting.

When everyone around you is telling you to give up, you hear a voice that faintly tells you to go on. There has to be a constant push to force the voice inside you to grow louder. The time has come for change in Washington. I believe the time has come for change in news.

Got one under my belt

I must reveal that I am quite relieved to have published my first posting. When I decided to join this blog, I was both excited and terrified. My sweet husband said, "Write what you know." Such wise and simple words. And thus began my existential crisis.

Well, what do I know? And do I even know much about what I know? Suddenly, everything I know seems trite and petty. I know about growing up in the San Fernando Valley. Yawn. I know about being a child actress. I may as well join a blog on E! and start waiting tables.

And then my old journalism professors' voices spoke to me. "Always ask yourself, so what and who cares?" Uh, nothing and no one. Jesus Christ.

I should also reveal that this is not my first blog. Oh no. In 2005, I started a blog called The Critical Thinker. I entered one, yes one, entry. I turned on myself and started critically thinking about my critical thinking and it just wasn't meeting my expectations.

I recently checked the URL and it has been taken over by a college professor. Makes much more sense.

When I decided to join this blog, I came up with a few ideas that I quickly shot down. One was to get to the bottom of why razor blades and printer ink are so outrageously expensive. (I may get to that one day, but don't think it is worthy "first post" material.) I also thought of exploring why so many trees in the Fall smell like semen. But I think the title of that posting would scare people away. And then I remembered Eleanor Roosevelt's words that Maria Shriver quoted when she endorsed Obama: "Do one thing every day that scares you." Ooooh. That could be my ongoing theme. So today, maybe I won't use a paper towel to turn the doorknob when I exit the bathroom. Scary! In many ways.

You know when you write in your journal and you start editing yourself as though people are going to read it? That's what blogging is like, except people are going to read it.

What I am really asking is for myself to be kind to myself. That is when good writing emerges. Great. So THAT'S when good writing emerges. No pressure, Meg. Be f*%&ing kind to yourself.

(Oh, and thank you Sarah Palin for providing so much rich material and for making it a little bit easier to write my first posting.)