TWO FROM ALTERNET

First, an essay on how late night comedeians may or may not affect US political discourse:

No Laughing Matter

Research I conducted using survey data from the 2000 election suggests that late-night viewers who don't know much about politics may be most influenced by the programs' content. For instance, people who did not know a lot about politics saw Al Gore as less inspiring over time with increased late-night exposure. Meanwhile, viewers who knew a lot about politics remained fairly constant in their judgments of Gore, regardless of how much Leno and Letterman they watched. So, for uninformed viewers, late-night programs might just help shape impressions of candidates.

Another special audience that may be affected by late-night (though they would be unlikely to admit it) is the news media themselves. Journalists are constantly testifying to the power of late-night. Why? Perhaps because the late-night hosts construct their caricatures of the candidates based on what is in mainstream news content. Leno and Letterman didn't discover on their own that Theresa Heinz is especially wealthy and Jon Stewart didn't just decide that the lack of WMD found in Iraq posed a problem for Bush. These are issues that journalists had already brought to our attention. So when late-night hosts package these caricatures into funny little nuggets, journalists hear their own reporting repackaged as entertainment.

Each time journalists include a Leno or Letterman joke to illustrate popular public opinion of a candidate, they're embracing a reality that they helped construct in the first place. Remember "Al Gore: serial exaggerator" and "George Bush: dummy?" Late-night's constant hammering on these two caricatures helped construct and reinforce journalists' impressions of how the public saw Gore and Bush.

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Next, a report on how file-sharing affects record sales:

Filesharing Is Not the Enemy

But a new study by Harvard Business School and University of North Carolina is going against the popular beliefs surrounding filesharing. After tracking 1.75 million downloads over a 17-week period in 2002 and then comparing those observations to the sales of 680 popular albums, the study found that filesharing has no negative effect on CD sales.

In fact, for the most popular 25 percent of CDs, the study found that downloading boosts sales. For every 150 songs downloaded, sales of that album jumped one copy.

"Initially, we were surprised by our results, given the consistent claim that P2P hurts sales," says Koleman Strumpf, co-author with Felix Oberholzer-Gee. "But on deeper reflection, not so much. Filesharing can potentially boost sales through the user learning about new music, and this could offset the substitution for buying, as is often claimed."

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