Well, it was invented by Larry and Sergey. And the idea was that we don’t quite know what evil is, but if we have a rule that says don’t be evil, then employees can say, I think that’s evil. Now, when I showed up, I thought this was the stupidest rule ever, because there’s no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something.

– Eric Schmidt, describing Google’s motto while on NPR’s “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”

In a detailed post, the site’s tech team has published a fairly thorough tick-tock on how the attack was carried out.

This is the opposite of what companies usually do when they experience a security breach. The pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army has been attacking the Twitter accounts of many Western media organizations in recent weeks, including CBS News, the BBC, Associated Press, and others). None of those organizations have followed up with any significant disclosure about what happened.

When companies and organizations suffer a computer breach of any kind, the impulse is to keep the details of how it was carried out close to the vest. There are many legitimate reasons for this, not the least of which is that it’s embarrassing. And the details can shed light on internal processes and procedures that might be of value to competitors.

In addition, there’s a public relations consideration. Stories about hacking attacks are negative. If there’s any media coverage, there’s an understandable desire for the coverage to stop. Disclosures about how it happened yield another round of coverage that would otherwise be unwanted. In cases like this, the desire for no coverage wins out.

As one media organization after another has fallen for the Syrian Electronic Army’s tricks, there seemed to be a common thread that ran through the circumstances of each incident. All appear to have fallen prey to some kind of “phishing” attack. These are spoofed emails that look legitimate but which contain attachments or links that are used to gather information like usernames and passwords to carry out the attack.

What The Onion has disclosed is that the attackers in this case used a sophisticated multilayered attack, using information gleaned in the first round to then launch a second that gathers more information, and so on, until at last they had penetrated the target: The Onion’s Twitter account, with a healthy five million followers.

This is by far the most detailed account of any of these attacks that I’ve read. And the more people who read it the better, because eventually the methods used will stop working.

I’ve long thought that there ought to be more transparency from private companies in these matters, especially from media organizations that have a certain amount of accountability to the public that they serve. When hackers thought to be based in China attacked several media organizations, including The Wall Street Journal (which, like this website, is owned by News Corp.) and the New York Times, the apparent intent was to monitor communications about reporting what those organizations were doing about Chinese officials and companies.

In the case of the Syrian Electronic Army, the intent was to take advantage of the Twitter followers these organizations have attracted and hijack their accounts to spread political propaganda. The attacks do some short-term damage to reputations and result in some embarrassing press coverage for a day or so. Usually, no one ever learns anything useful, because the details remain obscured. Yesterday, The Onion changed that. It’s an example we can all learn from.

The group, the Syrian Electronic Army, has claimed responsibility for some of the latest high-profile account hacks, taking over the official Twitter handles of NPR and CBS and, most recently, sending a false tweet from the Associated Press’s Twitter account that sent U.S. stock markets into a tailspin for a few brief moments last week.

“We are aware that a number of Guardian Twitter accounts have been compromised and we are working actively to resolve this,” a Guardian spokesperson told AllThingsD.

Update 3:15 PST: Twitter has sent out e-mail notices to a number of journalists who user Twitter, urging them to take extra security measures with their accounts in light of the recent hacks. A portion of the email, obtained by AllThingsD reads as follows:

“These incidents appear to be spear phishing attacks that target your corporate email. Promoting individual awareness of these attacks within your organization and following the security guidelines below is vital to preventing abuse of your Twitter accounts.”

And also worth noting from the email:

“We believe that these attacks will continue, and that news and media organizations will continue to be high value targets to hackers.”

In this the most recent hack, the SEA tweeted out advertisements for its movement from the Guardian’s smaller, vertical-based Twitter accounts such as @GuardianBusiness and @GuardianFilm, according to the Naked Security Blog, which first noted the attack.

“Follow the Syrian Electronic Army … Follow the truth! @Official_SEA12 #SEA #Syria,” the messages read.

It is possible, as noted by Guardian staffer James Ball, that the SEA used a similar email phishing attack employed last week on members of the Associated Press, in which the hacker cohort sent out well-crafted false emails that tricked staff members into handing over their email account information.

As of mid-morning Monday, a number of the Guardian Twitter accounts had been suspended.

After the spate of recent high-profile hacking incidents — including one on Twitter itself that potentially compromised 250,000 user accounts — Twitter has come under heavy scrutiny for its security practices.

The guys doing the Guardian phishing attack I mentioned yesterday (it’s SEA) are really very good: sustained, changing, mails today.

— James Ball (@jamesrbuk) April 29, 2013

Rumors circulated that the microblogging service would eventually introduce two-factor security authentication, essentially a way of verifying a user’s identity when trying to log in to an account.

It’s worth noting, however, that these rumors floated around last time Twitter was hacked, and we haven’t seen anything yet. Surmise what you will from that.

Representatives from Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.

You can’t throw a rock in Silicon Valley without hitting a media start-up. But within that field, new and untested business models are the most important link to journalism’s future, said Matter Ventures CEO Corey Ford — and they need a space to grow.

Ford comes to Matter, formerly known as Public Media Accelerator, from Runway, the accelerator inside of Eric Schmidt’s venture capital firm Innovation Endeavors.

Matter (not to be confused with the similarly named long-form journalism start-up) has funding for at least two years from its investors, KQED and the Knight Foundation, each of which put in $1.25 million. A third partner, the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), will act in a more advisory role.

But as Ford recently told AllThingsD in an interview at Matter’s new working space in San Francisco, that doesn’t mean the entrepreneurs who apply to the accelerator between now and January 6 are applying to work for PBS or NPR.

In fact, just the opposite is true — although it’s possible some of the projects that come out of the accelerator could be of interest to public media companies, since Ford took over in April he has placed the focus squarely on sustainable for-profit business models:

AllThingsD: Why change the name from Public Media Accelerator (or Public Media X) to Matter Ventures?

Corey Ford: It’s a fundamental shift that we had to do. I started in April, but we were announced to the world as Public Media Accelerator before then, before we started developing what this is. At Stanford’s D-school (design school, where Ford used to teach), you come up with a problem statement to be “needs-focused and solution-agnostic.” You don’t want to embed the solution in your problem statement.

ATD: You want an abstract goal and a variety of solutions.

Ford: Right. The shift wasn’t because we don’t like public media. I mean, we love it, I used to work in it, and I care deeply about it. But, in order to innovate within this space, you can’t start from an institutional perspective. I know it sounds very Silicon Valley-y, but I think of this as a disruptive playground. It’s about the entrepreneurs.

ATD: So, why “Matter”?

Ford: I needed a name that had a value-based filter, something that created meaningful signals in the ever-increasing noise out there. Something that matters. The other thing about the name is that we are unapologetically about for-profit scalable entrepreneurship. There can be a false dichotomy between mission — “you have to be a non-profit” — and “you have to be money-hungry.” There’s a middle ground.

ATD: So the groups that you accept will all be for-profit entities …

Ford: … seeking a sustainable, scalable business model. What we didn’t want was people building a media property and just having their business model be, “Well, it’s good media, so foundations should fund it.” That’s fine, but there’s already other people doing that.

ATD: This is an overgeneralization on my part, but there are two big camps among media start-ups: aggregators pulling from existing content that’s out there, and those producing new content. Which are you looking for more?

Ford: It’s an open door. The best ideas are gonna be ones that we can’t predict and put out a call for. The whole world is much smarter than we are. We’re a platform to attract entrepreneurs. With that in mind, this could range from participatory platforms to, potentially, B2B-type services for existing media companies.

ATD: So, not necessarily making new journalism …

Ford: … but supporting those that already do. So, for example, if someone could redesign the pledge drive to help them have a deeper relationship with their audience and collect money in some way … Ultimately, at the end of the day, business model innovation is the thing that really needs solving. It’s up to the entrepreneurs to figure it out as they go.

ATD: How will your partnerships (with KQED, the Knight Foundation and PRX) work? Back when this was Public Media X, I had it in my head that this was somehow KQED’s accelerator.

Ford: I’m super-grateful for our partners. But KQED and Knight and any other partner we bring in will never have control over our investments or our entrepreneurs. That’s fundamental to the strategy. KQED can learn by being close to what we’re doing because, by definition, it can’t operate from a disruptive perspective. And if the entrepreneurs are working on something that may be interesting to KQED, they now have an instant audience that they can test it on, if they want to. But you can never cross that disruptive line.

ATD: You still want the entrepreneurs to have freedom.

Ford: Yes. What I say to partners is, “My job is to support entrepreneurs. They could be building something that looks very threatening to you, and if they do, I will be the wind at their backs.” You have two options then. Say, “I’m scared, I don’t want to be close to it,” or do what I think is the smart thing and say, “I want to be close to this because I can learn a lot from it.”

In my mind, the ones who have no fear of failure are merely the dreamers, and the dreamers don’t build great companies.

– Joe Kraus, an investing partner at Google Ventures, from a story about failure in Silicon Valley by Melissa Block of NPR’s All Things Considered

I wish I could say I miss album packaging and liner notes and rue the decline in album sales the digital world has caused. But the truth is, I’ve never supported physical music as a consumer.

– Emily White, intern at NPR’s All Songs Considered and a senior at American University

While he has only been CEO of Yahoo for less than five months, in the next several days Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is facing perhaps the most critical moment of his short tenure.

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the board of Yahoo is not likely to take long in assessing whether he will stay or if he will be let go, due to a controversy around how a non-existent computer science degree got on his bio and also in Yahoo regulatory filings.

A special committee of independent directors is now investigating the matter, including trying to assess the damage has had on Thompson’s ability to lead the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

How quickly the board moves is likely to be a sign of their intent. If within the next days, it is likely to let the former president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit go and replace him with a current company exec; if it waits longer and shows some public support of him — which the board has not done since the scandal erupted — Thompson’s chances are better that he will only be given some sort of censure.

One important task is also closely considering the impact of possible legal problems related to Thompson and others signing documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission that were not accurate.

One thing is clear from interviews with multiple sources, many members of the board have not been happy with how Thompson has handled the matter since activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point uncovered the problem a week ago.

While first tossing the borked bio as an “inadvertent error,” Thompson was then largely silent about the issue with staff, despite being in close meetings with them, which caused stress among key execs.

Then, he made a public announcement in which he apologized for only the “distraction” caused by the incident and not the error itself as some had hoped he would.

Yesterday, apparently feeling it was time to try to explain things face-to-face, Thompson made another attempt to explain what happened in two separate meetings with his direct reports and then his senior staff, apparently trying to get through to employees that he did not fake his resume nor did he give an inaccurate bio to Yahoo when he was being hired for the job earlier this year.

Thompson thought it was time — now that the board investigation was underway — to answer questions directly, said a source.

Among other things, Thompson gave a somewhat convoluted explanation that it appeared in his bio due to a misunderstanding during an interview with a headhunting firm. And that he never noticed it once it proliferated And that when an NPR interviewer asked him directly about his CS degree, he did not want to correct her in mid-discussion — although others report he said he did not hear the question fully.

Sources said Thompson — who is on the midst of initiating changes across a large and troubled organization, after laying off 2,000 employees — thought the sessions went well, that he clearly communicated that he was taking blame for the problem and its repercussions. Those sources also noted that he received support for doing so after the talks.

But, more than a dozen others I interviewed who were listening remotely — some of whom I sought out and some who contacted me directly — thought Thompson’s complex explanation was deeply problematic and that he tried to foist the blame on others rather than on himself.

Every one of these people expressed the need for him to step down to allow Yahoo to move forward.

What the board thought about the performance is still not clear, said sources, but things are coming down to two distinct scenarios.

The first is a quick parting of the ways with Thompson, within days, either for cause or via a negotiated settlement. Others at Yahoo involved with perpetuating the mistake in the bio are also at risk.

This option is perhaps the more likely at this moment, unless the scandal dissipates and employees continued rancor over the situation can be assuaged soon.

In this case, sources said, Thompson will be replaced by a current board member or a member of the top staff. When directors fired Carol Bartz last fall, CFO Tim Morse became interim CEO and he is one of the likely candidates for the job again.

The second scenario centers on needing Thompson to complete a number of complex transactions related to the sale of Yahoo’s Chinese assets and its re-negotiations with Microsoft over its troubled search partnership, among other things.

In that case, Thompson will be censured in some manner by the board and will also probably have to endure some punishment for allowing false regulatory documents to be filed by Yahoo. Others at Yahoo will also be subject to the same treatment in such an outcome.

How will it turn out?

Only board member Patti Hart has so far paid for her faulty vetting of Thompson, stepping down from the board earlier this week.

But whether she will be the only shoe to drop in what has turned out to be a bizarre wildfire that as raged across Yahoo’s troubled landscape remains to be seen.

Thus, most definitely watch this space this weekend.

RELATED POSTS:

• Yahoo’s Parting With Thompson Will Be for “Cause” (a.k.a. CSLie)
• Ross Levinsohn’s Yahoo Plan: Back to the Future
• Here’s New Yahoo CEO’s First Note to Troops! (The Leaking-Internal-Memos-to-ATD Policy Remains in Effect As Usual)
• Yahoo Officially Confirms ATD Report on CEO Changes and Proxy Settlement
• Meet the Man I Call “The Hair”: The Video Stylings of Yahoo’s Newest CEO Ross Levinsohn
• Will Thompson’s Ouster Mean a Yahoo-Facebook Patent Settlement Too?
• Exclusive: Yahoo’s Thompson Out; Levinsohn In; Board Settlement With Loeb Nears Completion
• Heidrick & Struggles Slaps Back at Thompson’s Yahoo in Blame Game Over ResuMess
• Is He In or Is He Out? Crunchtime for Scott Thompson at Yahoo.
• Not So Scott Free? Yahoo’s Other Big Shareholder — Cap Re — Leaning Toward Supporting Loeb Over Thompson ResuMess.
• Tech Nation’s Gunn Says She and Yahoo CEO Discussed Their CS Degrees Before 2009 Show (Video and Audio)
• Loeb Calls Again for Thompson Firing From Yahoo, as Former eBay Boss Supports Him
• Place Your Bets: Will Loeb Drop Another Bomb on Yahoo at Vegas Confab Later Today?
• Exclusive: Yahoo Director in Charge of Botched CEO Vetting to Step Down From Board
• CEO Says Sorry to Yahoos for Borked Bio “Distraction” — But Will Mea Culpa Work Without an Apology for Error? (Memo)
• Buffett Comments on Trust Issue in Yahoo CEO BioGate: “You’ve Got a Problem”
• Loeb Lobs Lawsuit, as Expected, at Yahoo’s Borked Bio Mess
• As Yahoo CEO Reaches Out to Top Staff, Board Meets to Weigh “Options” (I.E., Deciding Who Gets to Take the Borked Bio Blame)
• Yahoo Should Expect Incoming Lawsuit Lobbed by Loeb Tomorrow on CEO Hiring
• They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don’t They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board.
• Yahoo’s Thompson Asks Employees to “Stay Focused” — Except Not on Him
• In 2009 Interview, Yahoo CEO Does Not Deny He Has a CS Degree, and Calls Himself an “Engineer” (Audio)
• Yahoo’s Board Will “Review” Resume Discrepancy of CEO
• How Did a Phantom CS Degree Get on CEO’s Bio in SEC Filings? Yahoo’s Not Saying.
• Yahoo’s Response on CEO’s Computer Science ResumeGate: “Inadvertent Error”
• Dan Loeb Alleges “Discrepancies” on Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson’s Resume Related to Computer Science Degree

The bust-a-gut-funny storyteller Mike Birbiglia let his imagination run wild, and got Gross to play along. He made the short film below for the 2012 “This American Life” live show, which was broadcast to some 500 movie theaters full of public radio fans on Thursday night (including the one I visited in lovely and foggy San Bruno, Calif.).

Another segment of the live show — which was themed around performances that wouldn’t work on the radio — was a special audience smartphone participation number by OK Go.

The band, which is famous for its creative music video concepts, created an app that split the audience into different tones of chimes. Then we provided accompaniment by pressing buttons within the app while OK Go played a couple of songs and projected a scrolling color-coded score, like in Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution.

Getting permission to allow people to use their cellphones in theaters was no easy task, and required multiple personal pleas to CEOs, said “This American Life” host Ira Glass, when he introduced the band.

While I had my phone turned on, I snapped the picture below:

Who in their right mind would lie to Ira Glass?

That was my first reaction to the revelation that the theatrical monologuist Mike Daisey had lied or fabricated — or in his words, “taken dramatic license” with — certain parts of his stage play, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

When I met people at parties in recent weeks and told them that I write about technology and that I had devoted more than a decade to covering Apple, the first question I used to get was: “Did you know Steve Jobs?” Since about January of this year, that first question has become, “What do you think of Mike Daisey?”

I haven’t had a real answer. I hadn’t seen his show, which was favorably reviewed by the New York Times, nor had I heard the episode of the highly respected public radio documentary program “This American Life” titled “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” that had been adapted from his play.

The show — or shows — hit a cultural nerve at a critical moment. Apple is the biggest company in the world, sporting a market capitalization of $546 billion as of Friday, with $100 billion worth of cash and investments on its balance sheet and the most popular stable of consumer electronics products in the world, especially the iPhone and the iPad. All of them are manufactured by workers in China, who labor for wages that are low by Western standards, put in hours that by Western reckoning are long, under conditions that to Western eyes aren’t ideal, doing jobs that by any standard are incredibly tedious.

Daisey’s stage show, which became a sensation among New York’s chattering classes, sought to draw attention to the plight of allegedly oppressed workers at Foxconn, Apple’s manufacturing partner in China. As New York Times reviewer Charles Isherwood put it, the play “is a mind-clouding, eye-opening exploration of the moral choices we unknowingly or unthinkingly make when we purchase nifty little gadgets like the iPhone.”

The stage show had been adapted for radio on public radio’s “This American Life,” which is probably the most-respected radio documentary program in the history of broadcasting. And the Daisey episode was presented as documentary, meaning the radio show’s staff of journalists and producers were vouching for it being true.

The problem: Much of it wasn’t.

In the show, Daisey described a trip to China, as well as a visit to Foxconn’s outer gates and other manufacturing companies in Shenzen, where many are located. He delivers a detailed and emotionally riveting account of meeting girls as young as 12, 13 and 14 years old who claimed to work for Foxconn. This would be in violation both of local laws and of Apple policies.

He also told of meeting workers poisoned by a chemical called n-Hexane, used to polish screens.

And, perhaps most movingly, he related a tear-jerking scene in which he showed a working iPad to a man who said he had crippled a hand while making its parts in a Foxconn metal press, yet had never so much as seen one of the devices powered on. Seeing the iPad’s screen in action, he tells Daisey, “is like a kind of magic.”

The word “magic” fits oddly here, because these meetings didn’t happen as Daisey said. “This American Life” yesterday aired a lengthy episode entitled “Retraction,” documenting Daisey’s many liberties with the facts.

To help do so, a reporter for another public radio show — Rob Schmitz of “Marketplace” — did what no one else in the media seemed to be willing to do, which was subject Daisey’s claims to scrutiny. Most damning of all in Schmitz’s report was the testimony of Daisey’s translator, called Cathy. She was found — after Daisey had told TAL he had lost contact with her — and disputed many of the anecdotes taken from the play and used in the radio segment about Foxconn.

Among the fabrications: Daisey didn’t speak to quite as many people nor visit nearly as many plants as he said he did. She disputed finding underage workers. The n-Hexane poisoning incident occurred not at Foxconn in Shenzen where Daisey visited, but at a Wintek facility in Suzchou, more than 900 miles to the north of Shenzen.

The stage show, and therefore the radio show that was derived from it, turned out to be a mixture of facts and fiction. Which might be fine for a production on the New York theatrical stage, where fiction and fact blend readily. And, while it might be okay in entertainment products, you don’t expect it from a prestigious radio documentary program.

And that is where the problems began.

When Daisey’s monologue was adapted for “This American Life,” outrage began to grow among people who wanted to do something about it. It was, Glass says, the most downloaded episode of “TAL” ever, and public radio listeners did what public radio listeners tend to do. For one thing, they started a petition. More than a quarter of a million people have signed a petition at Change.org, inspired by the TAL production based on Daisey’s work, demanding that Apple make changes.

That includes crafting a “worker protection strategy” for new products released, as well as publishing data from Fair Labor Association audits.

Feeding the frenzy, Daisey stepped up as the leading voice for worker rights in China’s electronics industry. He was seemingly everywhere in the media. Since the TAL segment aired in January, Daisey has been seen on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” in a report that, like the “TAL” episode, is now going to have to be retracted or at the very least walked back.

Another CBS-owned property, CNET, hosted Daisey as part of “Reporters Roundtable,” alongside Charles Duhigg of the New York Times, co-author of a series of front page stories in that newspaper. Duhigg ended his “Roundtable” appearance by urging people who care about the issue to go and see Daisey’s play.

Daisey also appeared on MSNBC repeating the same anecdotes and tarnishing the usually shiny Apple. And on HBO. And PBS. And C-SPAN.

Needless to say, there will have to be many more retractions in the days ahead.

At this point, it’s hard to determine what’s more outrageous, Daisey’s lies to Ira Glass and his team, or the national media’s willingness to give Daisey a platform to repeat the same lies and fabrications without making the slightest effort to vet them.

The circumstances around Apple’s manufacturing arrangements in China aren’t new. As a columnist for Businessweek I wrote about Apple’s first round of “sweatshop” allegations in 2006, well before the age of the iPhone and the iPad, which had at the time first come to light in part because of the reporting by London’s Daily Mail.

I’ve never been to China. Many people know more about the on-the-ground facts concerning Apple’s factories than I do. But there are many reporters who have been there. In 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Fredrik Balfour wrote a powerful cover story for that magazine, which aimed to get to the bottom of the string of suicides that occurred among Foxconn employees that year.

ABC’s “Nightline” visited Foxconn earlier this year. Its report was criticized in some circles, because at the time of his death, Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs happened to be the largest shareholder of that network’s parent company, Disney. Also, ABC had been invited by Apple and Foxconn. Even so, “Nightline” anchor Bill Weir, seeing conditions very different from what Daisey described in the course of his reporting, wondered if Mike Daisey’s work was questionable.

At the very least, Daisey is a dramatist who now admits he chose to lie, but for reasons known only to himself. The chance to raise his profile and sell more tickets to his monologue are obvious potential motivations. Whatever it was, his dramatic product is meant to be consumed as thought-provoking entertainment, not as fact-based journalism, which many people assumed it was.

This is the crux of Daisey’s defense for lying to Ira Glass and his fact-checker: That he’s not a journalist and took dramatic license with the events, and now regrets doing the “This American Life” segment.

And that’s the real shame here.

Clearly, people care about how workers who make our electronics are treated, or there wouldn’t have been a market for Daisey’s show, or for an hour-long radio documentary adapting it. And the subject is one we need to discuss at length as a society. The net result of Mike Daisey’s efforts to put self-promotion ahead of the facts has badly muddied the waters, and has probably done more harm to the people he sought to help.

So, instead of illumination on a serious topic, we are left with little. Mike Daisey is an opportunistic fabulist and should be ashamed of himself for lying. Ira Glass and his team are ashamed for giving him wider attention, and have said so. But there are many more people who should be even more ashamed for taking Daisey’s lies at face value. There should be many more retractions and apologies in the days ahead.

But now we have to start the conversation about Apple and Foxconn and workers’ rights all over again, this time with real, verifiable facts at our command. Is that so much to ask?

(Image courtesy of Mike Daisey’s Web site.)

As long as the newspaper was a bundle, no one ever had to care that people were buying it for radically different reasons. But once you go online, and people can unbundle things, where you can traffic directly to a story without going through the home page or any of the rest of it, suddenly what it — the individual choices made by individual readers come to matter a lot.

– Clay Shirky, on NPR’s Talk of the Nation with Neal Conan

Knell, who starts Dec. 1, fills a post formerly held by Vivian Schiller, who resigned in March.

People familiar with the company say Schiller, who once ran the New York Times’ Web site, will report to NBC News chief Steve Capus. Both Schiller and NBC declined to comment.

[UPDATE: Now NBC has announced the hire: Schiller will be chief digital officer, a new position.]

Schiller resigned from NPR in March, following a series of political flare-ups: The final straw was the release of a gotcha video that showed one of her lieutenants criticizing Republicans and the Tea Party.

If she shows up at NBC, I wouldn’t be shocked to see yelps from partisans who will argue that her hiring proves that the network is biased toward the left, etc.

Then again, NBC’s new owner, Comcast, is getting used to political controversy. Most recently, it has been asked to explain why it hired an FCC commissioner that had just voted on the company’s recent merger.

Today, as the left and right continue their epically exhausting battle for hegemony, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller resigned after a series of borks–including a sting video in the public radio’s top fundraiser insulted the Tea Party activists and the fumbled firing of commentator Juan Williams.

Oh dear.

Well, the former New York Times exec was pretty good at moving NPR into the digital age, at least.

In fact, BoomTown interviewed Schiller at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference about the digital future of NPR, which is pretty bright actually.

She talked about prospects for high-quality journalism and the ways the public radio unit could help create a more powerful network of many stations.

Here’s the full D8 video of the Schiller session, as well as a very funny spoof video she brought about some of the more way-out digital initiatives for NPR below it:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110309/nprs-vivian-schiller-in-better-digital-days-the-full-d8-video/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20110304/qotd-make-music-for-fun-not-profit/ http://allthingsd.com/20110304/qotd-make-music-for-fun-not-profit/#comments Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:04:01 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=30422

“Can you put food on the table with music? Probably not. I see music as a really great hobby for most people in five or 10 years. I see everybody I know, some of them really important artists, studying how to do other jobs.”

– Cake lead singer John McCrea talking to NPR, via Digital Music News. Showroom of Compassion, Cake’s most recent release, is the lowest-selling number-one album of all time.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110304/qotd-make-music-for-fun-not-profit/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110208/viral-audio-boomtown-on-npr-on-huffpaol-news-is-an-exciting-area-and-it-always-will-be/ http://allthingsd.com/20110208/viral-audio-boomtown-on-npr-on-huffpaol-news-is-an-exciting-area-and-it-always-will-be/#comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 08:23:32 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=40466

Here is my appearance yesterday on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” where I pontificate about AOL’s $315 million acquisition of the Huffington Post.

Whatever you think of the purchase–and there are a lot of differing opinions–I noted: “What [the deal] does say is that news is an exciting area and it always will be. It just depends on how it’s going to be distributed.”

Very sensible!

Listen in:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110208/viral-audio-boomtown-on-npr-on-huffpaol-news-is-an-exciting-area-and-it-always-will-be/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110118/networkeffect-on-science-friday-social-networking-identities/ http://allthingsd.com/20110118/networkeffect-on-science-friday-social-networking-identities/#comments Tue, 18 Jan 2011 09:03:44 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2419 On Friday I had the pleasure of being a guest on “Science Friday,” the weekly “Talk of the Nation” segment on National Public Radio. While the show’s normal guests are often actual scientists–unlike me!–I was asked to discuss my direct experience with and observations about online social networking options, and the various identities people create to participate in them.

Among the topics we discussed were the rise and fall of social networking sites and whether that makes them fads, the implications of oversharing from a young age and the potential for social networks to become more productive and engaging.

It was a fun chat, and you can now listen to it and read the transcript online.

You can also read my recent trend story about multiple online identities that helped spark the conversation.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110118/networkeffect-on-science-friday-social-networking-identities/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101029/heres-aol-now-live-new-homepage-and-welcome-back-lindsay-campbell/ http://allthingsd.com/20101029/heres-aol-now-live-new-homepage-and-welcome-back-lindsay-campbell/#comments Fri, 29 Oct 2010 19:44:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=36513

Today, BoomTown interviewed AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, along with NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, at the Online News Association Conference in Washington, D.C., about the future of journalism on the Web.

Afterward, I talked to him about the future of content on AOL, most particularly its new homepage revamp that focuses intently on editorial “curation,” rather than a more social direction being taken by rival Yahoo.

I also got a short demo of the new homepage, which is rolling out right now, instead of Monday as has been reported.

The new version–with a clean and spare design and a rotating logo–prominently features local news, video and content from AOL’s network of sites, such as Engadget.

It also launches three original video shows: A morning promotional feature called “You’ve Got”; a two-minute news program called “Daybreak,” with former “Wallstrip” host Lindsay Campbell–yay!–and produced by Ben Silverman’s Electus; and “The One,” an expert/opinion segment, done by Next New Networks.

The redo is yet another splashy move by AOL and Armstrong to push the company into a new direction of growth as its core access business declines.

It’s one wrapped almost completely around content, in hopes that creating premium branded content will attract lucrative advertising.

So far, not so good, as AOL’s ad revenues continue to lag in the midst of a difficult turnaround effort.

Presumably, Armstrong hopes a new look will help goose results in a better direction.

Here is a screenshot of the page, which is now available to users (click here to see the full image):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101029/heres-aol-now-live-new-homepage-and-welcome-back-lindsay-campbell/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101021/viral-radio-facebook-flap/ http://allthingsd.com/20101021/viral-radio-facebook-flap/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 08:18:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35957

Here’s a radio interview BoomTown did earlier this week on San Francisco’s KQED “Forum” show, hosted by Michael Krasny.

The topic was a report in the The Wall Street Journal that certain third-party apps on Facebook were grabbing information about users in ways that violated the social networking site’s privacy guidelines.

Privacy advocates cried foul, while others thought it was more a tempest in a teapot– which I, NPR reporter Laura Sydell and Marc Rotenberg, executive director for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, discussed.

One conclusion, which you will understand after listening: Facebook definitely does not cause cancer.

Here’s the audio:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101021/viral-radio-facebook-flap/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101015/three-cool-ipad-ads/ http://allthingsd.com/20101015/three-cool-ipad-ads/#comments Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:30:08 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24576 Earlier this week we got Condé Nast’s instructions on how to make a killer iPad ad. Now, three examples of some good ones.

These come from mobile ad start-up Medialets, which put together a highlight reel at my request. The video doesn’t quite do these things justice, because you really have to see them on Apple’s tablet to appreciate them. But take a look, anyway–it’s probably best if you view these in full-screen mode–and I’ll try to tease them out for you afterward:

Here’s what you just saw:

• FedEx ad, designed for Newsweek app.
• Visa ad, designed for NPR app with help from AKQA, Visa’s regular digital agency. Features e-commerce possibilities, without leaving the app, via Fandango.com and Broadway.com
• Toyota Prius ad, designed for Weather Channel Max app; allows users to “draw” images incorporated into video.

Again, the market for this stuff is so new that shops like Medialets are essentially starting from scratch each time they put together a tablet ad. And that means there’s no reason for these things not to be interesting–you’ve never seen them before.

But eventually some of this stuff will become more standardized, just as most Web ads are. And that will make it harder to stand out.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101015/three-cool-ipad-ads/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20100618/youtubes-secret-news-experiment-explained-warning-not-really-that-secret/ http://allthingsd.com/20100618/youtubes-secret-news-experiment-explained-warning-not-really-that-secret/#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 11:00:04 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=20717 Is YouTube getting into the local news business? No, not really.

But! SF Weekly has a weird, confusing tale about YouTube’s sort of secretive effort to launch a “local news experiment” in San Francisco. You can read the whole thing here, but the gist is that staffers at the Google (GOOG) site have tapped local bloggers, reporters, etc., to gauge their interest in a project whereby “citizen videographers–anyone with a video-capable phone or camera, really”–help cover local news.

Since the YouTube folks have been vague about what they’re up to and have told potential participants to “be discreet about who you speak with about it,” the whole thing sounds vaguely ominous/exciting.

The reality, alas, is fairly dull.

It’s this: YouTube is working with a San Francisco TV station to a launch a new iteration of its YouTube Direct platform, a person familiar with the plans tells me.

YouTube Direct is supposed to help publishers gather and distribute video from amateur contributors, essentially by plugging YouTube into their sites. The program has had a bit of a success when big media organizations like NPR or ABC’s “Good Morning America” have used it.

But local news outlets, which could theoretically really use help from both YouTube and their own readers/watchers, haven’t done much with it. So the idea is to use the San Francisco version as a showcase, and YouTube staffers are trying to pre-seed the effort by rounding up local contributors.

All pretty straightforward stuff. So why the sort-of cloak-and-dagger routine? Got me. I’m told that Google and the local station are planning on making an announcement about the launch next week. But really, this seems like something you just announce and then do. Simple, right?

Here, for the record, is YouTube’s official comment on the matter:

We launched YouTube Direct in November, and it’s been a great way for news organizations to easily leverage citizen reporting on YouTube. We’re currently experimenting with new ways to make the platform more useful, and we’ll have more to announce on that front soon.

All righty! I’ve already run the best “Mr. Show” local news clip. But here’s a worthy contender:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100618/youtubes-secret-news-experiment-explained-warning-not-really-that-secret/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100617/d8-video-npr-ceo-vivian-schiller-full-interview/ http://allthingsd.com/20100617/d8-video-npr-ceo-vivian-schiller-full-interview/#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 22:04:20 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://d8.allthingsd.com/?p=2404 At D8, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller, a former New York Times (NYT) digital exec, talked with Kara Swisher about the future of radio, the prospects for high-quality journalism and the ways the public radio unit could help create a more powerful network of many stations.

Here’s the full video:

Want to see it larger? Click here.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100617/d8-video-npr-ceo-vivian-schiller-full-interview/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100617/full-d8-video-nprs-vivian-schiller/ http://allthingsd.com/20100617/full-d8-video-nprs-vivian-schiller/#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:00:22 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=29491

As promised, All Things Digital is posting the full videos from our eighth D: All Things Digital conference, held earlier this month.

Doo…doo…doo…doo–Yes, that’s the sound that makes us think of NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (pictured here).

At D8, the former New York Times (NYT) digital exec delivered a riveting interview, talking about the future of radio, the prospects for high-quality journalism and the ways the public radio unit could help create a more powerful network of many stations.

Here’s the full video of the session with me, as well as a very funny spoof video Schiller brought about some of the more way-out digital initiatives for NPR below it:

Want to see it bigger? Click here.

Note: We’ll be posting full D8 videos on Mondays and Thursdays. Next up: Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100617/full-d8-video-nprs-vivian-schiller/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100607/wsjs-d8-special-tab-jobs-zuckerberg-ballmer-cameron-and-more-in-their-own-words/ http://allthingsd.com/20100607/wsjs-d8-special-tab-jobs-zuckerberg-ballmer-cameron-and-more-in-their-own-words/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:15:11 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=29095

Today, The Wall Street Journal published its special tab, both online and offline, featuring edited transcripts of some of the interviews Walt Mossberg and I did at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference last week.

The excerpts come from interviews we did with Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, Hollywood megadirector James Cameron, Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller and Ford (F) CEO Alan Mulally.

Also: A look back at quotes from past D conferences, which just makes BoomTown feel old.

Check it all out here.

And you can also see the full video of the interview with Jobs here. All Things Digital will be posting all the videos from D8, with a new one going up each Monday and Thursday.

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