Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The cult of celebrity is killing our culture.

Roger Ebert perfectly captures something I have been frustrated with for a long time:

The AP, long considered obligatory to the task of running a North American newspaper, has been hit with some cancellations lately, and no doubt has been informed what its customers want: Affairs, divorces, addiction, disease, success, failure, death watches, tirades, arrests, hissy fits, scandals, who has been “seen with” somebody, who has been “spotted with” somebody, and “top ten” lists of the above. (Celebs “seen with” desire to be seen, celebs “spotted with” do not desire to be seen.)

The CelebCult virus is eating our culture alive, and newspapers voluntarily expose themselves to it. It teaches shabby values to young people, festers unwholesome curiosity, violates privacy, and is indifferent to meaningful achievement. One of the TV celeb shows has announced it will cover the Obama family as “a Hollywood story.” I want to smash something against a wall.

Read the whole thing

(via kottke and The Denver Egotist)

Each episode so far is under five minutes – perfect for lunch-time enjoyment at the office – and features a sardonic Mayne more or less going behind the scenes at SportsCenter. AdAge reports:

Between “SportsCenter” clips, web-only shows devoted to mixed martial arts and more, ESPN.com averages between 120 million and 130 million video views per month. It streams a handful of original series — “The Rookie,” which chronicles Michael Beasley’s inaugural NBA season, and the weekly college-football travelogue “Road Trip” — as well as unaired content from news programming such as “E:60″ and “Outside the Lines.” Yet when it comes to original scripted web fare, the venerable ESPN.com has been beaten to the punch by any number of media upstarts.

The ESPN Video web site is fairly well-done, allowing viewers to comment and rate each web episode, as well as embed online. Although, the site could use a redesign. I’d rather see a cleaner user interface more similar to Hulu.com or even MTVMusic.com (essentially a Hulu-knockoff).

In the article, titled “The Contribution Revolution: Letting Volunteers Build Your Business,” he puts real backbone — sans Web 2.0 buzzwords or social-media hype — on the argument that customer participation drives tangible enterprise value.

“My job is simply to lay down the pipes and to enable the flow of meaningful contribution by passionate users,” he said. One of his biggest “aha” moments came when he realized that the vast majority of questions asked by consumers are answered by members of the forums. Wilder underscored the unique “nuggets of insights” he finds in these user forums.

Social-media exuberance is at an all-time high, and I worry we may be chasing the wrong prize. Events and campaigns and buzz tricks with unrealistic payout hurdles dominate the social-media landscape, often distracting us from bigger, more sustaining opportunities like the ones Cook outlines. Moreover, we risk cheapening the macro user-contribution ecosystem with short-term success criteria and our sometimes irrepressible desire to bend the message or “influence the influencers.”

Be sure to check out Scott Cook’s article in HBR when it’s available online.

Up next – I’m loving the new spot from Nike, “Fate.”

And finally, this short film from Carlos Lascano is simply gorgeous:

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

Created by Justin Dillon, the film brings together artists, politicians and entertainers to address the travesty that is the world’s blind eye towards modern day slavery. Dillon sent out an email to fans of the film today that I found inspiring:

A lot of people asked me recently about Open Source Activism.  What is it?  To me, it’s people getting together on an issue that they care about and doing something about it.  Everyone adds their own code, their own passion, their own talents. This weekend, your community gets to plunge into this movement by taking one small step – seeing a film. See what else people are doing at www.opensourceactivism.com

Last night, one of the C+R staff members pulled me aside and told me that we have received close to two thousand “bring this to my city” emails in the past couple weeks.  This is amazing!  Here is the deal:  We don’t have the money to buy traditional advertising. Even if we did, I’m not sure it would work at first. This is all about word of mouth.  We HAVE to succeed in these initial markets for the movement tol have the momentum to launch into virtually every city. Just like the beginning of any justice movement, this will succeed neighbor to neighbor,  city by city, state by state.  If Call+Response isn’t coming to your city this weekend, will you do me a favor?  Send a quick note to people who could buy tickets in a city in which we are releasing.  This is the only way we can make it to more theaters next week.

In addition to updating his web site, we refreshed his social media sites and launched a vlog. The sites went live this week, and we’ll be adding a couple more in the next week. Our goal was to make his music and videos easy to distribute, and we’ve got a good lineup of places to interact with Martin:

• Official Martin Sexton YouTube Channel
• Martin on MySpace
• Facebook
• iLike
• Flickr

We’re also working with a new widget service for musicians called Noisetrade, which makes it easy for fans to purchase Martin’s music, share with friends and embed the widget on their own blog. I’m particularly interested in the Noisetrade platform, and will be sure to follow up with a later post about it’s performance.

Up next is to continue building out his presence on more music sites in the coming weeks and provide analysis on measuring engagement across these sites, but in the meantime, I’ve been really pleased with the fans’ feedback. And if you haven’t checked out his latest album, Solo, it’s definitely worth a listen!

PSFK writes about What Kind of World Do You Want, a site that raises funds for: Augie’s Quest, Autism Speaks, Fisher House Foundation, Save the Children and Operation Homefront.

Organizations and viewers can upload their own videos (which are linked to the site’s charities) that explain what kind of change they want to see in the world. After viewing these calls to action, site visitors can donate money to the specific charity of their choice. The site was started by musician John Ondrasik, and has raised over $220,405 to date. Although the site could use an easier to use design, the idea is great. The videos give a face to charities in need, which could really help spur donations.

UPDATE – Similarly, YouTube has created their In My Name channel, dedicated to raising awareness around the United Nations Millenium Development Goals.

Created by Justin DIllon, the film is a cutting-edge model of “open source activism,” with the goal of ending slavery once and for all. Qui Diaz has an excellent analysis of the social media marketing taking place to promote the film and address the slavery crisis. Additionally, the film’s site explains:

There is a sea of change happening in human rights activism. The world’s issues cannot be solved alone by governments and non-profits, but require community-based participation. As a feature film, CALL+RESPONSE has the unique position of being not only a ground-breaking genre-bending film, but due to the fact that this project was funded completely through donations, it operates as a powerful movement with 100% of profits going to fund global field projects on the front lines of this issue.

There are 27 million people kept captive in slavery today. Go see Call + Response when it hits theaters and decide for yourself how you will address their cry for help.

Last night Iron Man opened here in several theaters around DC, and most of the Tweets getting thrown around were by folks eager to head to the theaters or trying to meet up with friends at the advanced screening of the Marvel movie.

Within seconds of the movie finishing, the reviews came pouring out – nearly all positive, at least, according to Summize, where a quick search aggregates all the Tweets about the film.

We experienced a taste of this when Cloverfield finally came out after an immensely successful viral marketing campaign. Fans who had desperately clamored to see the premiere instantly shared their reviews and opinions – many of them less than glowing – on Twitter, which resulted in a big opening day, but a quick fall-off.

And it’s that instantaneous feedback that will begin to shape the success of films. If it’s a winner, then the Twitter crowd will only help ticket sales on opening weekend, which is really the only weekend that counts. If the film is a dud, then the studios have even less of a chance duping moviegoers into even checking it out, as Twitter users have effectively killed the lackluster movie before it even had a chance.