The Sam Whitmore Sampler

Voting Machines Can Be Corrupted

Even Fox News says so. How about that?

Which historical figure said, "It's not who gets the votes, it's who counts the votes?" I think it was Stalin.

Then again, folks have been worrying about this for years.

The Digital Future... is Comin' On, It's Comin' On...

A little homage to Gorillaz in the headline there...

Anyway, Christy did some web research yesterday and came up with an assortment of noteworthy links:

* NBC News and the New York Film Academy are collaborating to turn out "digital journalist" graduates who understand how to gather news with all the toys in their knapsack. Smart of the behemoth to outsource the development of their craft to people who understand the medium but not the messages.

* A USC professor whose students seek work in "digital media" built a tag cloud derived from job postings at JournalismJobs.com. Notice how small the word "multimedia" is, compared with "Flash" or "blog".

* Video clearinghouses such as Newscom are now offering TV-quality broadcast video for download, as well as the web-quality stuff. Reuters is the first supplier -- the first of many, no doubt.

A Beautiful Place to Sweat

San Leandro Marina Park, in San Leandro, Calif. is a beautiful place to sweat. It's a park abutting the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. Here's a PDF map of it. If you sit on the right-hand side of an aircraft about to land at Oakland International Airport, you can see it really well out the window.

This place has ducks, sea birds, grass, trees, friendly people and 17 exercise stations. You run from one to another. Each is different: touching your toes, stretches, leg lifts, you name it. The circuit is tiring, but the fresh air and view more than compensate. If you're ever in the East Bay, you might want to check it out sometime. Even if you don't exercise, it's a gorgeous spot.

"Stalker Research"

We were speaking with a subscriber of ours recently, discussing how PR folks can get an edge with busy reporters. "We do the usual stalker research," she said, referring to Bacon's profiles, Google, whether the reporters have their own blog, etc.

I got a kick out of the "stalking" part. Reporters have no idea just how much their work is scrutinized by PR people. In my experience, PR people never let on how much they know about you. They don't want you to know how important you are to them, lest you play hard to get -- or harder to get, as the case may be.

Clear Channel Goes Private

Well, it finally happened. Clear Channel went private. Take a good look at the company's latest 10-Q -- you may never see such detail again. Its most recent 10-K is even meatier.

Election Fraud

Doc Searls says that he wouldn't be a bit surprised if Barack Obama is shot. Obviously we both hope he's wrong. But this year's electoral process faces an even more likely threat -- voting machine fraud.

Watch this video and bookmark blackboxvoting.org, because I guarantee you'll want to visit the site frequently.

You did hear that Kucinich was granted the recount he asked for in NH, right?

More on this Blog

Well, so much for posting every day. Our new Facebook group has 105 members as of today. That's where I'm putting a lot of our excess energy so this blog remained dormant this week. Our apologies to anyone who cares about such things.

I might have been a bit hasty about saying that there would be no more tech media stuff on here. A friend of ours in Washington reminded us that slogging around in Facebook groups can be an annoying experience, and by the same token, that RSS is a beautiful thing. Thou speaketh the truth, Frank. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Vegas

We spent a few manic days and nights in Las Vegas this week as part of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). I can never get over the amount of money it took to build some of these casinos. It's freakin' sinful. All the poverty and strife in the world... I don't even want to think about it. Then again, the Bellagio, the Wynn and the Venetian are absolutely gorgeous. The view from the outdoor cocktail lounge atop the Rio is spectacular. The cabs are expensive -- even more so than New York -- but the cabbies are friendly and helpful.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a Vegas cabbie wearing a turban. I once had a female cabbie who had recently arrived from Russia. She was fun to talk to -- talking about the old Soviet days. But she was white and pretty. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the shadowy powers that run Vegas don't want blacks or Arabs driving people around on the Strip. God forbid: that might make them uncomfortable and want to flee the city with no clocks, no reality and no shame.

An Announcement about This Blog

As of today we'll no longer post tech media content on The Sam Whitmore Sampler. Why? Because we've opened up a Facebook group for SWMS subscribers, and we believe it should be the single repository for all of our tech media content.

We're not discontinuing this blog. Quite the opposite: we'll continue to post each day. But it will be purely a personal blog -- or in the pejorative, an "ego" blog, I guess. If you come here to read about China's censorship or what happened to us at the rent-a-car desk in Seattle, you'll continue to enjoy the Sampler. But if you're a tech PR pro looking for the SWMS-related material we offer, come join us on Facebook. Add "swms at mediasurvey dot com" into FB and we'll do the rest. That's where all the new stuff will live, starting today.

SWMS Tech Media This Week Podcast: What Will CMP Do with David Berlind?

Now that CMP has the services of former ZDNet blogger David Berlind, what next? CMP itself is a mass of moving parts, with an acting CEO and a fluid management structure underneath. One possibility is to integrate his Mashup Camp franchise with the Web 2.0 Summit, the annual brainfest hosted by John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly. Why not add a technical component to that event, perhaps the day before? CMP could bring the strategic and tactical Web 2.0 under one roof and offer the whole megillah for a single price. But who asked us?

Om Malik suffered a mild heart attack on Dec. 28. His Jan. 3 post reveals that he's going to be OK, but he'll have to do without scotch, caffeinated coffee and his favorite fatty foods. Please join us in wishing Om a speedy recovery.

Hear more in this week's SWMS Tech Media This Week podcast (8:10), which is now posted.

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