Barking up the wrong tree 

Newspapers turn to podcasting to shore up readership among younger demos.

The logic goes like this: kids are way into iPods; podcasting is related to iPods; therefore podcasting is the ticket to the young audience. I've seen this same general idea offered by expert after expert including the big tech analysts, and it never feels quite right to me. I don't think podcasting is necessarily a youth phenomenon.

For one thing, there's a recent survey saying it's not the case. And anecdotally, I'm around a lot of kids, my high school and college aged sons and their friends. I've asked them about podcasting and end up having to explain it to them.

It's one of "goes-without-saying" truths that influential people like reporters seem to cling to even if they don't have any evidence for it. How does something get to be a given like that?

I want to say something about age demographics in general, and how I think they don't matter so much anymore, but not tonight.

Sloan-C schools offer free online courses 

From the press release

The Sloan Consortium, an international association of colleges and universities committed to quality online education, is offering students displaced by Hurricane Katrina an opportunity to continue their education at no cost. In collaboration with the Southern Regional Education Board and with a $1.1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the special accelerated program will provide a wide range of courses to serve the learning needs of students at the community college, university and graduate level, regardless of academic discipline. These courses will be given by major universities and other Sloan Consortium members. Students interested in finding out more about the program and the free courses can do so at www.SloanSemester.org.

I've heard about tons of colleges and universities offering free tuition for on-campus study, too.