December 2014

Facebook is built for storytelling. Should the law blame people who use it to spin stories?

[Commentary] How exactly the forum that is Facebook should be thought of under the law is something the Supreme Court has had to contend with in the Elonis v. the United States case. What the Justices have to decide is whether Elonis was engaged in mere First Amendment-protected storytelling and whether a reasonable person in 2014 would interpret his Facebook posts as what the law calls a "true threat". Elonis v. the United States, though, also raises a somewhat deeper question about the nature of Facebook. That is: Social media is geared toward performance. Should we really be surprised when people use it to perform?

Scripps Stations Get Options From DC Bureau

With the company shutting down its wire service and ready to spin off its newspapers next year, Scripps’ Washington bureau, once heavily print-focused, has made “a radical change,” becoming a leaner operation supporting TV stations' broadcast and digital efforts, says Bureau Chief Ellen Weiss. “Looking down the road, we are both building for the future and trying to meet the needs of the audience where they are now and how they get their content,” Weiss says.

Study: Campaign Cash Brings Tax Benefits On Capitol Hill

A new analysis takes aim at one of political science's evergreen topics: What do donors get in exchange for their campaign contributions? The answer, according to three researchers at Arizona State University's W.P. Casey School of Business, is that "investments in on-going access to policymakers are associated with future tax benefits." In other words, when corporations deployed lobbyists and made contributions from their political action committees to tax-writing committees, they got tangible benefits.

Twitter Improves Tools for Users to Report Harassment

Twitter wants to do more to make Twitter an appealing place to hang out online. The company announced new tools to make it easier to report harassment, which will be gradually introduced to its 284 million active users. In particular, Twitter intends to simplify the forms that a user has to fill out to report abuse, especially for mobile users, who have been forced to navigate a clunky interface. The company will also make it clear that bystanders can report abuse they witness.

FCC Seek Comment on Request of Engineers Frequency Advisory Committee to be Certified as a Part 90 Frequency Coordinator

This Public Notice seeks comment on the request of Engineers Frequency Advisory Committee, LLC (EFAC), to be certified to coordinate frequencies under Part 90 of the Commission’s Rules. Frequency coordination is the process by which a private organization recommends to the FCC the most appropriate frequencies for applicants in designated radio services.

The Dynamically-Delivered Future of Mobile Apps

[Commentary] I’m going to outline another way of thinking about app delivery that I think will be possible in the near future; one which makes discovery faster, installation transparent and the home screen close to redundant.

This concept, called “dynamic delivery,” involves delivering an app to your phone, not directly because you told your phone to install that app, but rather in response to a request for some content or action that is best delivered by installing that app. This shift in the model of how we own and access content is the beginning of a trend that will extend to the apps that provide us with access to that content.

[Chris Maddern is co-founder of Button, a customer acquisition and retention platform for the on-demand mobile economy]

Sprint Vows to Halve the Bills of AT&T and Verizon Defectors

Sprint will unveil an aggressive new price promotion that it claims will halve the bills of customers who defect from AT&T and Verizon in the latest salvo of an increasingly bitter price war. Under the terms of the deal, a customer can bring a current AT&T or Verizon bill to a Sprint store and store representatives will set up a new plan that is half of the service portion of that bill (the cost of calls, texting and data).

Apple to Defend Against iPod Antitrust Suit

After nearly a decade of legal wrangling, Apple will appear in federal court to defend against an antitrust suit stemming from an older generation of iPod music players. These older iPods played songs purchased from Apple’s iTunes Store or ripped from CDs -- but not tracks bought from competing online stores. Consumers who owned iPods could not easily switch to cheaper music players without losing their digital music catalogs.

CTIA’s Baker Guides Wireless Industry’s Agenda

"Spectrum, spectrum, spectrum.” That’s how Meredith Attwell Baker describes her priorities as the President and CEO of the CTIA-The Wireless Association.

Baker is the top advocate for a broad swath of the wireless industry, including telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, payment systems such as PayPal Mobile and navigation tools such as OnStar, to name only a few. At the top of her agenda are the government’s spectrum auctions, which wireless companies hope will give them the resources they need to keep up with voracious consumer demand for streaming services on smartphones and tablets.

Peter Bale named new head of the Center for Public Integrity

Peter Bale, former Vice President and General Manager of Digital operations at CNN International, has been named Chief Executive Officer at the Center for Public Integrity, the global nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in Washington, DC.

Bale succeeds William Buzenberg, who has served as Executive Director since 2007 and overseen countless award-winning investigations, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Breathless and Burdened. Bale is expected to begin work at the Center early in 2015, at which time Buzenberg will be moving to Boston to begin a fellowship at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Benton

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