Drudge still seems to have clout

Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, conservative with tabloid sensibilities exerts major Internet influence as a newswire and referral service.

Short, viral video impacts 2008 presidential election

This 2008 video short "McCain's Mansions" from Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films (with more than 600,000 views) percolated up through the media food chain into the mainstream, where it exploded.  It impacted the campaign, as shown by this self-promotional video, "The Making of McCain's Mansions."

Four years earlier, Greenwald's "Outfoxed" -- a low-budget documentary -- was reviewed by the New York Times movie critic at a "house party" held at a Brooklyn bar.

Daily Show Segment on N.Y. Times: "END TIMES"

The Daily Show's 2009 look at the New York Times' "day-old news." Jason Jones' segment was so cutting, it had me unusually sympathetic toward The Times. 

Glenn Greenwald interviews Brandon Smith, the young indy journalist who . . .

. . . forced the Chicago authorities to release the video tape of the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

GREENWALD: One of the things that I’ve always wondered about in reading about the work you did in this case is there are obviously a lot of big media outlets in Chicago like The Chicago Tribune and a bunch of network affiliates and other reasonably well founded media outlets. Why did it fall on you to pursue this case on the courts? . . . 

SMITH:  . . . It’s not so much like a really obvious failure it’s more of like, just a general trusting on their part of government and process. You know, I was a newspaper reporter for five years in Ohio and I got into the same groove of trusting my sources and like getting into a relationship with my sources. And so when they say, “Oh, the investigation is ongoing, to release a video would mean to screw up our investigation,” then I’m sorry to say that I was one of those reporters that just didn’t say boo to that. And over the years I’ve kind of developed this independent mindset that I think is really important in our work and I wish more people had it. 

Nice rhetoric from Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar . . .

. . . explaining his commitment to supporting independent journalism at First Look Media/The Intercept, in a video released Jan. 2014. (Since then, there has been some conflict between Omidyar's management team and the top journalists involved. Also, while First Look launched the investigative outlet The Intercept, it has scrapped plans for "multiple digital publications.")

Environmental journalist Bill McKibben gets himself arrested . . .

. . . in order to bring more attention to the story that Exxon's own research in the late 1970s and 1980s showed that the company was well-informed that "the greenhouse effect" was real . . . well before the rest of us. Yet Exxon spent millions on climate-change denial in the 1990s and 2000s.

South Carolina legislator wants to set up a government registry of "responsible" journalists

When I first heard about this story, I assumed it was from The Onion.  It's too crazy to be true, right? Well, it was reported by Mother Jones.

Syllabus for Independent Media Course

Syllabus for "Independent Media -- Issues and Challenges"

Links to student blogs

Justin B . . . Celisa C . . . Alyvia C . . . Deia D . . . Guillaume G . . . Diana H . . . Sara K . . . Faith M  . . . Cecilia M . . . Rachel M . . . Evan P . . . Aidan Q . . . Tara S . . . Ramya V.