Every year, on the final Sunday of October, San Francisco’s Bernal Hill Park is host to the Illegal Soapbox Derby. There’s nothing really illegal about it, from what I’ve read. It’s just not an officially sanctioned soapbox derby. And rightly so.

The event isn’t about winning or losing. It’s about how you’re able to survive flying down a hillside lined with barbequeing onlookers, without spilling your beer. In fact, the only rule of entry in the derby — a rule not so much enforced as encouraged — is that your ride has a mounted beer holder.

I didn’t collect any audio at yesterday’s derby, but I did run around and take a bunch of photos. Enjoy.

(Click the play/pause button on the far-right to run the slideshow, or use the navigation tools to manually select photos.)

photos, sports | 3 Comments »

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 marked a major shift in the way the Federal Communications Commision, or FCC, deals with media ownership. Among its changes, the Act allowed companies to own more than one radio station within a local market and removed a limit on national radio marketshare. The result was more than 1,000 radio mergers within one year.

Since 1996, the FCC has continued on its course of deregulating media ownership. In 2003, the agency attempted its most dramatic deregulation yet, allowing cross-media ownership. That is, owning broadcast and print media within the same local market. But after a federal court struck down many of the deregulations (and the Supreme Court refused to hear multiple appeals), the FCC was told to revisit its reasoning behind relaxing its media ownership rules.

Now, the FCC appears to be ready to try this again. Chairman Kevin J. Martin has announced that he wants a vote on cross-media deregulation in the next two months.

The last time the FCC tried this, it was flooded with 3,000,000 public comments against the rule change, it went ahead with it anyway and a federal court threw out the new rules.

What will happen this time?

More on:
FCC’s new plans for deregulation here.
Promethius Radio Group (anti-deregulation activist group that won its case against the FCC’s 2003 rules) here.
Hey, I wrote a paper about the FCC and the public interest in grad school! It’s right here.

politics, podcasts, media | 1 Comment »

I recently built a Flash slideshow for The Nature Conservancy, using some amazing stock photos they have of California’s landscape. The slideshow just went live on their website. It’s tied in with the Conservancy’s quarterly print newsletter that just went out this week. For the moment, the URL is only listed in the newsletter (no link provided on their website), but you can click through with the link below.

Hopefully there will be more of these to come. I’d love to produce some audio and tell some stories to go along with the Conservancy’s collection of beautiful photographs.

Enjoy

Imagining California slideshow

photos | 1 Comment »