92YTribeca Video: The State of the NYC Blogosphere
Journalist Faith-Ann Young files a video report for Mashable’s recent “The State of the New York Blogosphere” talk at 92YTribeca. You can read the insta-reaction here.
Don’t miss Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, in conversation with BusinessWeek editor in chief Stephen J. Adler at 92YTribeca in April and Mashable’s next two events, Lessons from the Local Internet Startup Community (Apr 28) and Social Media Marketing 101 (Jun 3).
92YTriBits: Sing-Alongs, Women’s History Month, Edward Albee Day
Raven Snook, web editor for Time Out New York Kids and host of Friday’s Yentl Sing-Along at 92YTribeca, lists 11 films just begging for a little sing-along love.
March marks Women’s History Month, and what better way to celebrate than by sharing the stories of and engaging in discussion with other women. Here’s what we have planned: Women Girls Ladies: A Fresh Take on Women’s History Month with Gloria Feldt, Elizabeth Hines, Deborah Siegel and Courtney E. Martin (Mar 18); For the Next 7 Generations: The Grandmothers Speak: Work-in-progress screening with filmmaker Carole Hart and other activists (Mar 19); When Challenges Arise: Six short films produced or directed by women with post-screening Q&A (Mar 25); Arranged with director Q&A: View of arranged marriages through the eyes of an Orthodox Jew and Muslim (Mar 26)
Today is Edward Albee Day in New York City! The Vulture blog asks, how will you celebrate? Well, you can make plans to spend an evening in April at 92YTribeca with him, David Henry Hwang, Deborah Brevoort and David Grimm to discuss Mentoring in the Arts. We’re sure that’s what he would want.
L to R: Streeter Seidell, College Humor; Michelle Collins, BestWeekEver.tv; Thom Woodley, The Burg, The All for Nots and Alls Faire; Julie Klausner, What’s What and Cat News; Matt Yeager, The Burg and The All for Nots; Rusty Ward from Barely Political; Moderator Gabe Delahaye, Videogum
They then discussed the tricks and trade of the low-budget video biz. Apparently, there are a few things that all but guarantee your video will be seen and picked up by media outlets: animals pooping, people falling down, and fat guys doing anything (Seidell even argues this could be the premise of an entire series). But all joking aside, the panel offered insight into maximizing the internet’s potential, praising Twitter (though Woodley cringed to say the word - which in turn made our hearts cry a little bit inside) and Digg as vehicles to drive the viral spread (Collins even admitted that BWE used to pay a guy in Ukraine to Digg their videos – but don’t worry, no longer!), and making the most of the metadata – video tags, thumbnail pictures, and the like, to make your video eye-catching and to help with Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO, or in layman’s terms, how close your video appears to the top of a Google search).
But the online video world is not as easy as it looks (hey, they can’t all be Chocolate Rain or this Weekender parody). The panel agreed there is a one-week lifetime for getting your video out there, and then it either takes on a life of its own or becomes lost in the depths of the internet. Seidell mentioned there is a 64% viewer drop-off rate after each video on College Humor, so you can forget about brand loyalty; viewers will watch quality videos, regardless of who made them. He also mentioned that only .01% of their readers are active in the comments, though that didn’t stop some of the panelists from sharing stories of how they were greatly affected - both positively and negatively - by this feature. Some said they posted video simply FOR the comments and to see if people liked it; Klausner said that it got to a point where she removed the comments feature on her site altogether. “To me, if they watch, that’s good enough,” she said.
So how is this instant internet video affecting television and movies? Klausner said she thought that movies were getting longer because of the internet, and that people feel they get more bang for their buck paying $12 for a movie that’s 2 and a half hours long. As an example, she mentioned that Sex and the City and He’s Just Not That Into You felt “fourteen days long” (hey, at least she got her money’s worth, right?). She also feels that sketch comedy is getting shorter and more precise. The group mentioned Jon Glaser’s new show on Adult Swim, Delocated, as an example of something that works well for this new age of television and comedy.
And funnily enough, you can catch Jon next week at 92YTribeca when he presents “An Evening of Entertainment from the Witness Protection Program” with the help of “Bo Ra Flengo” (who may or may not be Yo La Tengo), the burlesque troupe “The Monfani Sisters” (who may or may not be The World Famous Pontani Sisters), “Peanut Butter” (Andy Blitz), “J.P.Griles” (A.D. Miles), and an exclusive video from “Yvgeny Mirminsky” (aka Eugene Mirman). We’ll be there to see if “Yvgeny’s” video follows these web experts’ advice.
He also spoke about at length on the challenging business models facing newspapers today, telling moderator Matthew Bishop, “You cant afford to lose newspaper journalism, you can’t afford to lose all the investigative reporting...so newspapers ought to be owned by foundations or wealthy families not looking for any real great economic return.”
Bishop then brought up the subject of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s recent investment in the New York Times and asked Eli if it bothered him that the New York Times might fall into the hands of the Carlos Slim. “Would it worry me if Carlos Slim owned the New York Times?” Eli repeated, continuing, “From what I know he’s a decent fellow, he’s been involved in some charitable activities, not only in Mexico but a little bit in the United States. Including maybe helping the Broad Institute, so...”
Expounding further on the topic of philanthropic ownership of newspapers, Eli suggested that having several foundations own a newspaper, as opposed to just one, could have beneficial effects on preserving journalistic freedoms—depending on which families were involved. Asked what families should not be charge of newspapers, Eli answered, “the Madoff Family.”
Dr. Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for the work he started 30 years ago when he created the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. The first bank in the world to give loans to destitute populations on the basis of trust rather than solvency guarantees or security, the Grameen bank has revolutionized lending practices in Third World nations by allowing populations previously excluded from lending services access to capital to start and grow businesses. Now with operations around the globe, Grameen Bank opened it’s first outpost in the U.S. last January in Queens, New York. The New York TimesCity Room blog was there, and reported that Yunus was greeted like a rock star by the community: “It was like being with Mick Jagger, without the security detail”.
And in spite of long held assumptions about the credit worthiness of low income people, 99.5% of Grameen Bank loans are repaid. A recent CNBC segment on Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank said: “It seems that the poor are more likely to honor their debts, than the rich.”
“The problem with capitalism, Yunus told CNBC’s Fast Money, is its distinction between companies pursuing profit and charities pursuing good...Despite an explosive growth rate and opportunities to do business with the wealthy, Grameen remains true to its mission; it still only gives loans to the poor, and mostly women. ‘We saw that money going to women brought much greater impact (on households),’ Yunus explains to the traders. ‘It’s not the repayment, it’s not the risk, it’s the impact.’”
Next month on April 19, the 92Y will host Muhammad Yunus in a talk titled, ‘A More Humane Capitalism’, where Muhammad will talk about his new book, Creating a World Without Poverty, and answer questions such as how can the power of the free market be used to solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and inequality.
Mary Cheever (on John): “He may be unfaithful, he may be a drunk, but he always came home for dinner.” [via Ed Champion]
If you get an early copy of this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, you’ll see the cover story (above) is on Blake Bailey’s authorized biography on John Cheever which was released yesterday. There is a lot of praise for the book, and even John Updike reviewed it for The New Yorker before passing away. He called it, “a triumph of thorough research and unblinkered appraisal—a seven-hundred-and-seventy-page labor of, if not love, faithful adherence.”
Headlined by The Daily Show‘s Wyatt Cenac and John Oliver, Monday’s Purim Spiel at 92YTribeca with the Shushan Channel included spoofs on Battlestar Megilactica, Frost/Haman and Hebrew School Musical (pictured above) created by writers from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The Simpsons, Frasier and more. Check out pics below!
Eli Broad: “Newspapers ought to be owned by foundations, not look for great financial returns.”
Last night at the Y, entrepreneur Eli Broad, who built two Fortune 500 companies—SunAmerica Inc. and KB Home—over a five-decade career in business, discussed the philanthropic work of The Broad Foundations with Matthew Bishop, chief business writer and US business editor of The Economist. Reuters reports on the event and notes his interest in the newspaper business:
Eli Broad, a wealthy philanthropist who once looked at buying the Los Angeles Times, is still interested in a foray into the newspaper business, he told a gathering in New York on Monday night.
“We can’t afford to lose good newspaper journalism, investigative reporting,” the 75-year old retired business maven said during a lecture on business in philanthropy at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan.
The Times, which is owned by the Tribune Co, has like most U.S. newspapers been struggling with a steep drop in advertising revenue brought on by U.S. economic woes and a migration of readers to the Internet.
Real estate magnate Sam Zell took Tribune private in an $8.2 billion deal in 2007 that loaded up the company with billions in debt. The company filed for bankruptcy protection last year.
The L.A. Times is expected to eventually be put up for sale again.
Broad, jokingly, said: “I’ve regained my sanity since then,” referring to his earlier interest. But turning more serious, he added: “I would like to see our foundation and others join together to own the LA Times.”
Stephanie Lee interviews writer and psychologist Susie Orbach for the New York Press in advance of her “Loving Our Bodies” talk at the Y on March 11 with science writer Gina Kolata.
Who is most vulnerable to warped self-images?
I think girls and women and increasingly boys and men are vulnerable. What I try to talk about in Bodies is a situation in which the mother’s body has been so undermined and that that has been projected on the child. That they are inadvertently passing on their own distressed relationship with their bodies along with their nurture.
If mothers have increasingly been told that they need to get back to their pre-pregnancy weight or any fat is terrible, they get uptight about their own bodies at a time that they need to be lactating and eating well. They need just to be concerned with the relationship with their baby.
We see photos of celebrities who don’t go into pregnancy because they’re so terrified of getting fat. So a mother may not respond to her own body’s needs to eat or rest or to the needs of her baby’s body. She may just be worried about all of the rules and regulations
What caused you to take on this issue with such passion? Have you suffered from an eating disorder?
No, I haven’t. When I wrote Fat is a Feminist Issue, I was writing about the phenomena of dieting and feeling that you needed to be watchful of your body. To me, that would be so normal today. And when I wrote Fat is a Feminist Issue, I never really thought I’d write anything else on the topic, but it spoke to a lot of people. So I wrote three more books on the subject. But I’ve written about all sorts of aspects of psychology too.
It was seeing all sorts of people in pain and anguish so it made me write this book to put on the public agenda what the hell we are doing to our body. It’s almost as though we’ve become a slave to an image of what our bodies should be like, instead of our bodies working for us.
Gene Tierney and Thelma Ritter star in The Mating Season, a gentle comedy of mistaken identity exposing class and economic tensions.
Comedy 2.0: Video Series on the Web. A panel discussion and clip show with the creators of The Burg, Barely Political, College Humor, BestWeekEver.tv and Cat News.
Thu, March 12
1999’s The Terrorist. This Indian espionage drama attempts to get into the mind of the suicide bomber, which puts it a few years ahead of its time. Part of the Desi Diaspora series, co-curated by DJ Rekha.
Shabbat Dinner with David Einhorn, president of Greenlight Capital Hedge Fund and author of the best-selling book, Fooling Some of the People All of the Time: A Long Short Story
Renowned matchmaker and dating expert Janis Spindel divulges the secrets to understanding the minds of contemporary single males at Reading the Minds of Men.
Your building’s stoop. A community institution as important as the barber shop or coffee shop. It is where you meet your friends, watch people pass by, flirt with girls, listen to your music, or talk with your super. The stoop in New York City is your building’s community center.
If you are blessed to experience that stoop in New York City, you are blessed to know of an experience that approaches the status of a national treasure. And if your stoop is in Brooklyn, well there is a good chance your experience with it has been immortalized in movies, books, poems, art work, and song.
What would the Rolling Stone’s ”Waiting On A Friend” look like without a stoop? A Bronx Tale? Spike Lee movies? Could you imagine your neighborhood without a stoop? We couldn’t. As a matter of fact, the importance of stoop culture is so important to us we have an event series that celebrates it: Stories from the Stoop.
And at the 92nd Street Y on March 26, presented in conjunction with The Storytelling Center, we start the series off with Stories From The Stoop: Borough Park, Brooklyn, with Laura Simms and Gioia Timpanelli. It is here you will be told fascinating stories of the people who live there. Folktales brought from distant shores as well as personal stories of life in New York today. These stories transmit the values, history, traditions and rituals of the array of people who live and work side-by-side in these neighborhoods.
These are your stories. These are your neighbors stories. Your city’s stories. And we want to celebrate and share them.
The week of Purim festivities begin at 92YTribeca with our Purim Party ‘09. Perhaps you have seen the spoof video circulating? The New York Times stopped by 92YTribeca for a rehearsal performance of Purim Party ‘09 and spoke to the performers. “‘It’s our Mardi Gras,” actor David Schiller, said during a rehearsal on Thursday night. Seth Herzog, a comedian who plays the villain each year with sketchy panache, exclaimed, “This is the most Jewish thing I do. It’s my High Holy Day.”
“Maybe your mother didn’t sit you down,” they wrote, “in a chocolate-brown, wall-to-wall-carpeted Central Jersey living room and put the Yentl soundtrack LP on the record player until you had every song memorized...But it’s never too late to embrace Babs’ 1983 tour de force about a young Jewish woman who wants to be educated and therefore cross-dresses because societal sexism of the time forbid a woman from studying certain religious texts.
So if you’re a cross-dresser, Talmud-lovin’ Jewess, or a fan of buttah, you should probably head over to 92YTribeca on March 13 for the first-ever Yentl singalong.”
We may or may not be cross dressers, but either way, we agree with Entertainment Weekly’s assessment. We’ll see you there! And in support of Babs struggle for equality in religious training, this is the perfect occasion to bring out your Modern Orthodox Teffilin Barbie.
Last night at the Y, entrepreneur Eli Broad, who built two Fortune 500 companies—SunAmerica Inc. and KB Home—over a five-decade career in business, discussed the philanthropic work of The Broad Foundations with Matthew Bishop, chief business writer and US business editor of The Economist. Reuters reports on the event and notes his interest in the newspaper business:
Stephanie Lee interviews writer and psychologist Susie Orbach for the New York Press in advance of her 
