Back in the beginning of 2007, inspired by Futurist David Houle, I wrote about my vision for a new medium on which printed media would morph into electronic media, yet still retain the look and feel of printed news.

Well, another step has been made towards that vision, and it’s taking its roots in advertising.

Entertainment Weekly is taking on an experiment by which super-thin video screens will be embedded into pages of their magazines.  Prominent television personalities will grace the screens in advertisements, predominantly for Pepsi and CBS.

Americhip has developed the technology, and has developed many advanced marketing strategies that entice all five senses of the customer.  A strategy the company likes to call “multisensorizing”.

The cost of such a video-laced magazine ad hasn’t been disclosed, nor has the market for the technological magazines been specified.  However, New York and L.A. audiences are on the radar to participate.

I can’t imagine that the experiment will be cheap, but cost is largely relative, and if CBS and Pepsi see a return on their investment, we may end up seeing more of these digital screens in magazines in the very near future.

This is just the beginning.

As I mentioned in my post back in 2007, I foresee these digital screens growing into pages of their own, fed content through the Internet, and pushing the paper delivery boy out of business.

The technology is here, and by the fact that we’re going to get a taste of the technology in a magazine, even in limited distribution, tells me the price of the technology is becoming more and more attractive.

If you happen to encounter a copy of the magazine with the video ads, I’d like to hear your opinion on the experience!

Technology David Houle, magazines, media, Technology, video ads

I’ve been pondering the validity of these frequent “town hall” meetings President Obama has been holding for some time.  They’ve effectively become (or maybe they always were) an invitation to a select few, on in the most recent case, thoroughly filtered questions submitted by email, that toss up softball questions for the President to knock out of the park.

Well, it seems the media is catching on, and it’s not just the Fox News folks that are starting to question the transparency of the big show.

Even Helen Thomas got riled up over this…

Check it out.

Politics Barack Obama, media, Robert Gibbs

Opinions are like elbows.  Everybody has one, most have two, and by reading the papers and watching the news, you’d think the media is run by double-jointed octopuses.

Take a look for yourself.  In tomorrows paper, take a yellow highlighter to the statements that are factual, not the entire sentence, just the factual statements.  You can give the author the benefit of the doubt and highlight the quotes from other sources if you wish.

Next, with a blue highlighter, highlight all the opinions.

When you’re done with the article, compare the number of yellow statements with the number of blue statements.  What do you notice?

If you’re like me, you notice that there are far more opinions in a single article than factual statements.

What happened to reporting the facts and letting the consumer form the opinion?

I believe that one of the drawbacks to living at warp speed is that we tend to leave the critical thinking to others for the sake of saving time.

Whatever, just give the facts to the guy on TV and let him tell me what the facts really mean.

Add some financial incentive and facts can be manipulated through opinion to achieve a desired outcome.

Opinions are OK, but they don’t constitute news.  To be honest, the opinion section in my local paper is only two pages by typeset only.  The opinions spill into the rest of the paper, most likely without conscious objection from the author.

I don’t mind opinion, but when reporting the news, please just stick to the facts, and let me determine what those facts really mean.

Think critically folks!  Ask for the facts and form your own opinion around them…  and turn off the TV!

The sports page records people’s accomplishments; the front page has nothing but man’s failures.

Commentary media, media bias, opinion vs. fact, television