Handy comparison for developers & producers trying to decide b/w Flash & HTML5

"Traffic doesn’t seem to be the right measure of civic impact. A story that gets lots of page views or is widely shared might be civically relevant, but might also be salacious – amusing and popular as much of the Anthony Weiner coverage has been, I’m not sure it’s been a positive contributor to our civic involvement. Phil suggested that comments aren’t an adequate metric either. Stories that garner long comment threads could suggest broad involvement, but also may suggest partisan controversy.
I mentioned an idea that I’ve been trying to pitch for a while: in an age of participatory media, news demands participation. Or to quote Benjamin Barber, “People are apathetic because they are powerless, not powerless because they are apathetic.” For people to pay attention to an important story, it’s possible that we need to work to make it possible for people to have an impact on the outcome of the story."

This presentation by Transmedia Storyteller contains an interesting diagram of how multiplatform narratives are generated.

ITVS Crossmedia Strategy

"… the web is not just some kind of magic all-absorbing meta-medium. It's its own thing. And like other media it has a question that it answers better than any other. That question is: Why wasn't I consulted?"

Kara Hodge's MA thesis on local media in DC

"If raw readership totals equaled impact — on political discussion, on democracy, on the culture — then USA Today would be more important than The New York Times and Reader’s Digest would be more important than The New Yorker. Reaching the “right” people — and by that I mean the people who have disproportionate influence in political discussion, democracy, or culture — can make an outlet’s reach more potent than traffic numbers would suggest."

There are fascinating implications for a world of probabalistic resource use: for one thing, it points up the importance of "signal amplification" through retweets, reposts, and other recycling of interesting tit-bits – these are critical to the successful use of a medium that can't be consumed by any one person from tip to tail."

Now, in the best tradition of advocacy journalism and the core values of The Nation, Hari’s article has sparked the potential powder-keg of disenchanted Americans. As the Guardian reported today, Carl Gibson of Jackson, Mississippi recently started the first US UNcut group after reading Hari’s piece in The Nation, and there are now at least twenty chapters coast to coast.