Links Potpourri 09.01.06

• Publishers toss Booker winners into the reject pile.
They can’t judge a book without its cover. Publishers and agents have rejected two Booker prize-winning novels submitted as works by aspiring authors.

• Honestly, "truthiness" is selected the word of 2005.
A panel of linguists has decided the word that best reflects 2005 is "truthiness," defined as the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts.

• The Year of the Podcast
Podcast is the word of the year, or hadn't you heard? I mean literally; the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary chose "podcast" as their word of the year, beating out such runners-up as "lifehack" and "sudoku."

• What Will You Pay For Media?
The best things in life -- TV, radio, newspapers -- used to be free, or pretty darned close to free. And now they're not. So the media question for 2006 is: What are you going to pay for, and why?

• Is on-demand service killing prime time?
"It's not just about the Nielsen (ratings) anymore," says Jerry Maglio, Starz! vice president of marketing. "It's about the Nielsens plus this plus that, depending on who's being targeted, that will equal success or failure. The video landscape is changing -- daily, it seems."

• Films have never just been about entertainment.
David Puttnam: Does political cinema mirror life? How much impact can a movie have on its audience? To what extent is it able to influence the way we think about politics? The relationship between cinema and politics, often troubled, has recently become far too distant.

• Telenovela, American-Style
"Nuestro Barrio" (Spanish for "Our Neighborhood"), America's first locally produced telenovela, or Latin American soap opera, is poised to offer much more than love affairs and plot twists. "Nuestro Barrio" offers a Jeffersonian vision: Success comes from learning the game of economics, working hard, and playing to win. The dialogue, conducted in Spanglish, is a mix of Spanish and English, reflecting the language of many immigrants.

• "Framing" e manipolazione del linguaggio.
La lezione inaugurale dell’anno accademico 2005-2006 ha avuto come relatore al prof. Juan José García-Noblejas: Il “framing” consiste in un’operazione in cui il senso delle parole non indica solamente il senso delle cose di cui si sta parlando, ma lo “orienta” e lo “inquadra” dando o togliendo dalle cose certe loro qualità. In casi estremi si arriva a contraffare o impadronirsi della realtà, separandola sofisticamente del linguaggio, e riducendola a una semplice categoria linguistica.

• El año que vivimos digitalmente
Weblogs. La blogosfera hispana comenzará a segmentarse temática y geográficamente, se incrementará la importancia de los portales temáticos y agregadores de nicho...