Ken McCarthy
Encyclopedia
Ken McCarthy is an American activist, educator, entrepreneur and Internet commercialization pioneer.
, McCarthy's father Francis W. McCarthy (1922–2003) was a pioneer in the practical applications of data processing
technology for the insurance industry.
McCarthy's maternal grandfather, Andrew Paretti of the Bronx, New York, was the preeminent granite masonry contractor in the New York City area from 1936 to 1955. His firm did the stone work for the chapel at West Point, Keating Hall at Fordham University, and the Peace Plaza of the United Nations, as well as numerous public works projects during the Robert Moses
era.
McCarthy graduated from Regis High School (New York City)
in 1977 and Princeton University
in 1981. At Princeton he hosted a jazz program for WPRB
-FM. While at university and immediately afterwards, he produced numerous concerts including several for his college roommate, multi-Grammy nominee Stanley Jordan
. His studies at Princeton included neuroscience, cognitive psychology and anthropology.
in the first part of the 1990s, including early experiments with legitimate e-mail advertising, contributions to the development of the banner ad, practical applications of pay-per-click advertising and Internet video
.
In 1994, he organized and sponsored the first conference ever held on potential commercial applications of the World Wide Web. Marc Andreessen
, co-founder of Netscape
and developer of the first commercially successful Web browser
, was the keynote speaker. Other Internet pioneers who acknowledge the impact McCarthy's ideas had on their own work include Ed Niehaus
, Rick Boyce
, and Steve O'Keefe. In a talk at Pacific Bell
in 1994, McCarthy described in detail the new content marketing and distribution model the Internet was making possible, a model now sometimes referred to as The Long Tail
.
In 1998, he sold his company E-Media (a term he coined and for which he owned the federal trademark) to an investment group which rolled it up into Nine Systems, which in turn was absorbed by Akamai Technologies
. He remains active in the Internet industry as an advisor, investor and entrepreneur operating under the name Amacord, Inc.
He worked as a consultant to NEC's Biglobe, Japan's largest online service, from 1996 to 2001. He wrote the first book on Internet entrepreneurship published in Japan: The Internet Business Manual.
Projects that came out of that conference include one of the first detailed studies of an election fraud to appear in any medium (the 1997 49er Stadium bond issue in San Francisco); a virtual museum dedicated to recovering the forgotten story of one of San Francisco's most historically important neighborhoods (the Fillmore); and documentation of the largest and most successful maritime evacuation in history (New York City on September 11, 2001.)
McCarthy has also worked with challenged communities — Hudson, New York
and New Orleans, Louisiana
— to develop strategies to use the web to organize citizens and engage in public education and outreach. His work in Hudson resulted in the defeat of a plan to build what would have been North America's largest coal fired cement plant on the banks of the Hudson River.
Since 2006, McCarthy has worked with Levees.org, the New Orleans-based organization dedicated to ensuring that New Orleans' levees are rebuilt correctly and that levees in other parts of the country with similar engineering flaws are tended to and repaired.
(IICS), to write a cover story for the Internet Gazette on the potential of streaming video on the Internet.
The Internet Gazette, a short-lived print publication distributed for free in the San Francisco Bay Area, was founded and published by McCarthy to serve as a vehicle for disseminating practical advice to members of the Bay Area digital interactive communications community on how to use the Internet as a publishing and marketing tool.
In 2005, inspired by the launches of YouTube
and Google Video
, McCarthy began an online publication on Internet video called The System Video Blog. In this publication, McCarthy tracked the development of the Internet video industry and reported on his own experiments in Internet video publishing.
The projects included providing support for Levees.org, the New Orleans based non-profit and creating an online video encyclopedia about the city of New Orleans, FoodMusicJustice.org; a searchable compilation of clips from television newscasts and independent video makers, BrasscheckTV.com; a search engine for videos of jazz performances, JazzontheTube.com; and an educational site on nutrition and food safety issues, TheRealFoodChannel.com.
studios (When We Were Kings
, Like Water for Chocolate
); and on Wall Street, as a technical communications consultant to Bankers Trust and First Boston.
In the 1980s, while still in his twenties, he guest lectured at the business schools of Columbia University, MIT and New York University as part of a project called Optimal Learning which was based on practical applications of his academic studies in psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University
.
Over the years, McCarthy has published a large number of articles on a wide variety of subjects including business, eCommerce, the history of media, economics, the business cycle, financial markets, geopolitics, U.S. politics, political dissidents in China and other countries, medicine and public health, agriculture and military science. These articles have been a mix of investigative journalism, analysis and prediction. Some of these articles have been posted to brasscheck.com and brasschecktv.com
The content of Brasscheck is the property of the First Amendment Defense Trust. This organization was created after McCarthy's investigation of the San Francisco 49ers
stadium bond issue election.
BrasscheckTV features videos on a wide range of contemporary topics, available via e-mail subscription. Ken McCarthy has been an advocate of alternative media
. He is quoted in an interview on July 9, 2007, with Wes Unruh, of Alterati.com, describing traditional news reporting;
McCarthy talks about BrasscheckTV.com in a July 2007 interview on Alterati;
In 1999, McCarthy collaborated with filmmaker Rick Goldsmith to create an online archive of the work of American investigative journalist George Seldes
(1890–1995) in support of Goldsmith's Academy Award-nominated film Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press
.
The name McCarthy gave to his own investigative efforts — "Brasscheck" — came from a book by Upton Sinclair
about which George Seldes
made the following comment:
Early life and education
Born in New Haven, ConnecticutNew Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
, McCarthy's father Francis W. McCarthy (1922–2003) was a pioneer in the practical applications of data processing
Data processing
Computer data processing is any process that a computer program does to enter data and summarise, analyse or otherwise convert data into usable information. The process may be automated and run on a computer. It involves recording, analysing, sorting, summarising, calculating, disseminating and...
technology for the insurance industry.
McCarthy's maternal grandfather, Andrew Paretti of the Bronx, New York, was the preeminent granite masonry contractor in the New York City area from 1936 to 1955. His firm did the stone work for the chapel at West Point, Keating Hall at Fordham University, and the Peace Plaza of the United Nations, as well as numerous public works projects during the Robert Moses
Robert Moses
Robert Moses was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of...
era.
McCarthy graduated from Regis High School (New York City)
Regis High School (New York City)
Regis High School is a private Jesuit university-preparatory school for academically gifted Roman Catholic young men located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Annual class enrollment is limited to approximately 135 male students from the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut tri-state area...
in 1977 and Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1981. At Princeton he hosted a jazz program for WPRB
WPRB
WPRB is a commercial broadcasting, non-profit 14,000 watt college radio station, once part of Princeton University, broadcasting from Princeton, New Jersey. The majority of on-air and management staff consists of Princeton University students, in addition to a board of trustees comprising...
-FM. While at university and immediately afterwards, he produced numerous concerts including several for his college roommate, multi-Grammy nominee Stanley Jordan
Stanley Jordan
Stanley Jordan is an American jazz/jazz fusion guitarist and pianist, best known for his development of the tapping technique for the guitar....
. His studies at Princeton included neuroscience, cognitive psychology and anthropology.
Contributions to the Internet industry
McCarthy is best known for his pioneering work in the movement to commercialize the InternetInternet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
in the first part of the 1990s, including early experiments with legitimate e-mail advertising, contributions to the development of the banner ad, practical applications of pay-per-click advertising and Internet video
Internet video
Internet Video is the general field that deals with the transmission of video over the Internet. Many sub-topics are associated with this topic:* IPTV* P2PTV* Peercasting* Video clip* Webcasting* Streaming Video* Internet Television...
.
In 1994, he organized and sponsored the first conference ever held on potential commercial applications of the World Wide Web. Marc Andreessen
Marc Andreessen
Marc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur, investor, software engineer, and multi-millionaire best known as co-author of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, and co-founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. He founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard...
, co-founder of Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
and developer of the first commercially successful Web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
, was the keynote speaker. Other Internet pioneers who acknowledge the impact McCarthy's ideas had on their own work include Ed Niehaus
Ed Niehaus
Ed Niehaus is an American CEO and publicist.Along with partners Bill Ryan and Melody Haller, Niehaus founded Niehaus Ryan Haller which served the Internet industry during the rapid growth period of the 1990s...
, Rick Boyce
Rick Boyce
Rick Boyce was an early marketeer in the commercialization of the World Wide Web.A media buyer with the San Francisco ad agency Hal Riney & Partners, Boyce was recruited by HotWired's chief executive officer, Andrew Anker, to be HotWired's director of business development when the company was...
, and Steve O'Keefe. In a talk at Pacific Bell
Pacific Bell
The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company was the name of the Bell System's telephone operations in California. It gained in size by acquiring smaller telephone companies along the Pacific coast, such as Sunset Telephone & Telegraph in 1917...
in 1994, McCarthy described in detail the new content marketing and distribution model the Internet was making possible, a model now sometimes referred to as The Long Tail
The Long Tail
The Long Tail or long tail refers to the statistical property that a larger share of population rests within the tail of a probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution...
.
In 1998, he sold his company E-Media (a term he coined and for which he owned the federal trademark) to an investment group which rolled it up into Nine Systems, which in turn was absorbed by Akamai Technologies
Akamai Technologies
Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an Internet content delivery network headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.The company was founded in 1998 by then-MIT graduate student Daniel M. Lewin, and MIT Applied Mathematics professor Tom Leighton...
. He remains active in the Internet industry as an advisor, investor and entrepreneur operating under the name Amacord, Inc.
He worked as a consultant to NEC's Biglobe, Japan's largest online service, from 1996 to 2001. He wrote the first book on Internet entrepreneurship published in Japan: The Internet Business Manual.
Activism
In 1995, McCarthy organized and sponsored a conference on the topic of using the web as a local publishing medium to assist community building.Projects that came out of that conference include one of the first detailed studies of an election fraud to appear in any medium (the 1997 49er Stadium bond issue in San Francisco); a virtual museum dedicated to recovering the forgotten story of one of San Francisco's most historically important neighborhoods (the Fillmore); and documentation of the largest and most successful maritime evacuation in history (New York City on September 11, 2001.)
McCarthy has also worked with challenged communities — Hudson, New York
Hudson, New York
Hudson is a city located along the west border of Columbia County, New York, United States. The city is named after the adjacent Hudson River and ultimately after the explorer Henry Hudson.Hudson is the county seat of Columbia County...
and New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...
— to develop strategies to use the web to organize citizens and engage in public education and outreach. His work in Hudson resulted in the defeat of a plan to build what would have been North America's largest coal fired cement plant on the banks of the Hudson River.
Since 2006, McCarthy has worked with Levees.org, the New Orleans-based organization dedicated to ensuring that New Orleans' levees are rebuilt correctly and that levees in other parts of the country with similar engineering flaws are tended to and repaired.
Internet video publishing
In the summer of 1994, McCarthy commissioned Hank Duderstadt, then head of the Video SIG for the San Francisco chapter of the International Interactive Communications SocietyInternational Interactive Communications Society
International Interactive Communications Society is a professional trade association for companies and individuals involved in interactive media. This organization traces its early roots to the days of interactive laser disc production in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1980s...
(IICS), to write a cover story for the Internet Gazette on the potential of streaming video on the Internet.
The Internet Gazette, a short-lived print publication distributed for free in the San Francisco Bay Area, was founded and published by McCarthy to serve as a vehicle for disseminating practical advice to members of the Bay Area digital interactive communications community on how to use the Internet as a publishing and marketing tool.
In 2005, inspired by the launches of YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
and Google Video
Google Video
Google Videos is a video search engine, and formerly a free video sharing website, from Google Inc. Before removing user-uploaded content, the service allowed selected videos to be remotely embedded on other websites and provided the necessary HTML code alongside the media, similar to YouTube...
, McCarthy began an online publication on Internet video called The System Video Blog. In this publication, McCarthy tracked the development of the Internet video industry and reported on his own experiments in Internet video publishing.
The projects included providing support for Levees.org, the New Orleans based non-profit and creating an online video encyclopedia about the city of New Orleans, FoodMusicJustice.org; a searchable compilation of clips from television newscasts and independent video makers, BrasscheckTV.com; a search engine for videos of jazz performances, JazzontheTube.com; and an educational site on nutrition and food safety issues, TheRealFoodChannel.com.
Other activities
In addition to his work in the Internet industry, McCarthy has been involved in the music industry, as a concert producer and promoter; in the film industry, as co-founder of one of New York City's first digital film audio post productionAudio post production
Audio post production is the general term for all stages of production happening between the actual recording in a studio and the completion of a master recording. It involves, sound design, sound editing, audio mixing, and the addition of effects.-Film:...
studios (When We Were Kings
When We Were Kings
When We Were Kings is a 1996 documentary film directed by Leon Gast about the famous Rumble in the Jungle heavyweight championship match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. The fight was held in Zaire on October 30, 1974.The film features a number of celebrities, including James Brown, Jim...
, Like Water for Chocolate
Like Water for Chocolate
Like Water for Chocolate is a popular novel published in 1989 by first-time Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel.The novel follows the story of a young girl named Tita who longs her entire life to marry her lover, Pedro, but can never have him because of her mother's upholding of the family tradition...
); and on Wall Street, as a technical communications consultant to Bankers Trust and First Boston.
In the 1980s, while still in his twenties, he guest lectured at the business schools of Columbia University, MIT and New York University as part of a project called Optimal Learning which was based on practical applications of his academic studies in psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
.
Over the years, McCarthy has published a large number of articles on a wide variety of subjects including business, eCommerce, the history of media, economics, the business cycle, financial markets, geopolitics, U.S. politics, political dissidents in China and other countries, medicine and public health, agriculture and military science. These articles have been a mix of investigative journalism, analysis and prediction. Some of these articles have been posted to brasscheck.com and brasschecktv.com
The content of Brasscheck is the property of the First Amendment Defense Trust. This organization was created after McCarthy's investigation of the San Francisco 49ers
San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers are a professional American football team based in San Francisco, California, playing in the West Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League . The team was founded in 1946 as a charter member of the All-America Football Conference and...
stadium bond issue election.
BrasscheckTV features videos on a wide range of contemporary topics, available via e-mail subscription. Ken McCarthy has been an advocate of alternative media
Alternative media
Alternative media are media which provide alternative information to the mainstream media in a given context, whether the mainstream media are commercial, publicly supported, or government-owned...
. He is quoted in an interview on July 9, 2007, with Wes Unruh, of Alterati.com, describing traditional news reporting;
"I think because traditional news reporting is so incredibly inept, most people that are interested in what's going on have pretty much figured out that you can't rely on anything that appears in the news anymore, if you ever could. If you're going to get any information you're going to have to piece it together yourself, and that's what the Internet is for...But that's a relatively small percentage of the population. Most people are either not interested in the news, probably fifty, sixty percent, and another huge portion is willing to accept whatever they're told. So for that small percentage of people that really wants to know, the Internet's been a blessing and I think it will be very persistent."
McCarthy talks about BrasscheckTV.com in a July 2007 interview on Alterati;
WU: So it's BrassCheckTv.com that is your primary independent journalist site at this point?
KM: Yeah, I've gotten lazy in my old age, basically I just go out and find good videos and then I put them up on the site. Then I write about them and send people to them. And occasionally I do something on my own, like the Scott Ritter interview, but the bulk of the stuff is stuff I find on the Internet. I think what I'm doing, the service that I offer is that I'm putting the videos into context and giving people background on the significance of what they're actually seeing sometimes in these videos, as a way of connecting them to other phenomenon that's going on.
In 1999, McCarthy collaborated with filmmaker Rick Goldsmith to create an online archive of the work of American investigative journalist George Seldes
George Seldes
George Seldes was an American investigative journalist and media critic. The writer and critic Gilbert Seldes was his younger brother. Actress Marian Seldes is his niece....
(1890–1995) in support of Goldsmith's Academy Award-nominated film Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press
Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press
Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press is a 1996 documentary film directed by Rick Goldsmith about the author and critic George Seldes. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-External links:*...
.
The name McCarthy gave to his own investigative efforts — "Brasscheck" — came from a book by Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
about which George Seldes
George Seldes
George Seldes was an American investigative journalist and media critic. The writer and critic Gilbert Seldes was his younger brother. Actress Marian Seldes is his niece....
made the following comment:
"In 1920, Upton Sinclair, an outsider to journalism, wrote The Brass CheckThe Brass CheckThe Brass Check is a muckraking exposé of American journalism by Upton Sinclair published in 1919. It focuses mainly on newspapers and the Associated Press wire service, along with a few magazines. Other critiques of the press had appeared, but Sinclair reached a wider audience with his personal...
, the first book exposing the press. It was this book, plus a friendship with the author lasting many years, that influenced me and the books I wrote on the press, beginning in the 1930's."
External links
Articles
- Article: "David Cements Goliath" DM News, May 9, 2005
- Video: "The first conference on web commercialization" Ken McCarthy, Mark Graham, Marc Andreessen. San Francisco: November, 1994
- Web site: "The Fillmore Museum" A mid-1990s experiment in community Web publishing
- Web site: "Food Music Justice" Life in Post-Katrina New Orleans
- Web site: "Harbor Heroes" Documenting the 9/11 maritime evacuation
- Interview: Ken McCarthy on DIY Journalism at Alterati
- Interview: Ken McCarthy, Uncensored at brasscheck.com
- Article: "Excerpts from E-Media's Ken McCarthy" Ish, David. The New Fillmore, 1996
- Web site: Writings on the Internet's future A collection of McCarthy's articles about the Internet's commercial potential, 1994–1996