Category Archives: Media

Want More Revenue? Go Online

Despite the uneasy relationship between print magazines and the web, online is the place to be for magazines that want to increase their bottom line. According to the Guardian article “What a .com can add to your brand,” the online versions of many print magazines are experiencing bigtime revenue growth. Print versions certainly aren’t going anywhere, but the Internet is giving new and more lucrative opportunities to put trusting eyeballs in front of eager advertisers.

EPA 2004

Evangelical Press AssociationThe 2004 EPA Convention finished up in Minneapolis last night. Highlights included seeing publications I’ve written for take home awards, including Advance, Go!, and passageway.org. I also contributed to a blogging seminar, met a lot of powerful and influential people, and took home more Christian magazines than I realized existed.

Advance really cleaned up with an Award of Excellence for Most Improved Publication and a Higher Goals first place award for Publication Redesign (what is “Higher Goals” anyway?). Go! claimed a Higher Goals first place and passageway.org earned an Award of Merit for Online Publication.

On Wednesday morning I put on a blogging seminar with Steve Knight, “Blogging: Throwing a Curveball to the Publishing World” (and yes, the baseball theme was overdone before things started). Sharing my knowledge and research of blogs was a blast. I had no idea between 2 and 8 million people write blogs (depending on who you ask) and 90 percent of bloggers are between the ages of 13 and 29. An outline and relevant links will be posted in the next day or two.

Media Bias

I hate to take the time to post this, but it seems worth pointing out. Last month ABC News did a story on Biblical belief and anti-semitism, basically trying to add some back story to the charge that Mel Gibsons’s The Passion of the Christ encouraged anti-semitism by suggesting that the Jews were responsible for Christ’s death.

They explored beliefs on literal interpretations of the Bible and found that 6 out of 10 Americans take Biblical accounts of creation, the flood, and the parting of the Red Sea as literal truth. Quite a high number.

Then they ask how many Americans think that Jews today are responsible for Christ’s death — 80% said no. Then they make the argument that literal beliefs are inconsistent because a literal belief would blame the Jews, “as some literal interpretations of the Bible suggest,” basing this on Matthew 27:25 (“His blood be on us, and on our children.”).

Basically it seems like ABC is trying to stoke the anti-semitism fires by claiming that if 60% of the population were consistent in their beliefs, we’d be blaming the Jews. I’d like to know who’s espousing these “some literal interpretations” ABC cites. It seems like pretty lousy journalism that they don’t mention what groups are promoting that view.

This whole anti-semitism thing drives me nuts. It’s not my fault blacks were slaves 200 years ago. Don’t hate me for it. So why would I hate the Jews for something that happened 2000 year ago? Never mind that we all shoulder the responsibility for Christ’s death. Never mind that without Christ’s death we’re kind of screwed — so why are we looking for someone to blame?

The fact that the media would encourage this lame argument with such lame reporting is discouraging.

The Media and Anthrax

Anthrax, boo! Do you feel like the media’s blowing the anthrax story way out of proportion? Anthrax this, anthrax that. Anthrax isn’t a contagious disease, so while an envelope full of it is dangerous, it won’t infect an entire town. As a weapon of mass destruction, anthrax relies on panic. And it looks like whoever is behind the attack counted on that. They hit the big three news networks, a company that owns tabloids like the National Enquirer, and a few senators to stir things up.

The media latches onto images of haz-mat teams suiting up and you’ve got panic across the nation at every spilled packet of Sweet ‘n Low. The aim of terrorism is to inflict fear, and the news media is helping.