Topic: Media

In the 2008 Presidential election, race has become a major issue in many of the battleground primary states. West Virginia stands out as an example of how difficult it is likely to be for Obama's campaign to deal with this problem in the general election. Scott Finn of West Virginia Public Broadcasting filed this report soon after the May state primary, where poll results showed how race and religion affected the election.

On this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell speaks with VisiCalc co-creator Dan Bricklin. They talk about one of the key challenges of capturing and publishing spoken-word audio: enabling non-experts to make good audio recordings. Discussed are tools and techniques for recording, and strategies for getting other people up to speed with them.

When it comes to presidential elections, all politics is dirty. In this third report from the Center for Public Integrity's The Buying of the President series, Stephanie Mencimer, a reporter for Mother Jones, examines dirty tricks in politics, including recent rumors that Barack Obama is a practicing Muslim. Who are the opposition researchers or tricksters who dig up this dirt? Her investigation attempts to answer these questions and more.

Rick Falkvinge is a Swedish politician who recently founded a new party. Its values include freedom, upholding laws, and rights to privacy. These may sound like safe and just laws - things that are constant and don't need defending; so what's jeopardizing them? According to Falkvinge, that would be copyrights and patents.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Rick Smolan, author of "America at Home," who tried to capture how Americans live through pictures of their homes.

On the last day of the Presidential primaries, John McCain spoke to a group of supporters in New Orleans. The speech was widely criticized in the media as illustrating how unfamiliar McCain seemed to be with delivering prepared remarks, even after being a Representative and Senator for 26 years. Charles Lane, '08 Conversations Host and PRX.org Curator, presents a fascinating comparison between McCain's awkward comments and Barack Obama's more natural manner of speaking.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with media futurist Gerd Leonhard about the next stage of online music, and asks him to give a peek into the future of online media distribution.

John Buckman founded Lyris, an email list management company, and more recently Magnatune, an online music service that uses Creative Commons licenses and pays artists 50% of its revenue. On this edition of Interviews with Innovators, host Jon Udell asks Buckman about the common thread to his passion: the world-changing possibilities of online communication.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with author Steve Cone about his new book "Power Lines," in which he writes about words that sell, grip fans and sometimes change history.

The explosion of free user generated content on the internet is both a threat and an opportunity to the traditional publishing industry. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, tells how his new company Wikia will "fill in the rest of the library" around the Wikipedia. Wikia is a collection of books, guides, and references much more thorough and exhaustive than the articles on Wikipedia and is creating new kind of content that has never been feasible before.