IT’S AS A MEDIA GUY that I’ve gotten really fascinated by elephants. In large part, anyway.

Along with many pachyderm enthusiasts around the world, I’ve long been in awe of these animals’ gigantic majesty, their social cohesion, and their well-appreciated smarts – including of course that renowned and enviable memory of theirs.

Continue reading “The Super-Communicators – Elephants, that is. And Cracking their Codes” »

Dateline: Austin, Texas – AT THE SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST festival (SXSW) you can obviously get to really binge on movies, and here that means real movies, shown on – gratifyingly – the big screen.  Continue reading “Making Media Experts of the Media-Deprived — in Prison” »

Dateline: Austin Texas – THE ANNUAL SHINDIG that is South By Southwest is never unenjoyable for a media-hound. How could it be – with its abundant, tripartite combination of a Film division, an entire Internet universe (or more officially the ‘Interactive’ division) and the all-pervasive backdrop of a Music festival?

It’s just that there is so much to enjoy, and so much variety within that extravagant multiplicity.    Continue reading “Petting Robots and Connecting Citizens” »

THOUGH BUFFETED IN COURT, at the Federal District level at least, President Barack Obama will press on, we know. His immigration reform – outmaneuvering by executive fiat the die-hardism of GOP majorities in Congress – will doubtless get delayed but not destroyed.

Meanwhile Obama’s bold budget, based on what he so fondly nicknames “middle-class economics”, will likely escape major media attention amid all this immigration kerfuffle, but still be resolutely pushed forward by the Administration. What setbacks it encounters will come in Capitol Hill committee rooms, not in courtrooms.

So there will soon be many lively battles and skirmishes to report.       Continue reading “Fresh Take on ‘Middle-Class Economics’ – A Non-Nobel Prize” »

“A WEEK IS A LONG TIME in politics”, to use words from my old country’s late and somewhat unloved Prime Minister Harold Wilson. It can be true in the media too.

A remarkably packed media week certainly flowed from the massacre at France’s Charlie Hebdo magazine and the hostage killings at the 20th arrondissement’s HyperCacher kosher foodstore in Paris.    Continue reading “Invidious Comparison: Asymmetric Massacres in France and Nigeria” »