Right in front of our eyes the media is changing.  It used to be the Washington Post or New York Times uncovering Watergate or The Pentagon Papers.  Not much anymore.  Those media outlets don’t do much investigative reporting anymore, and rarely break real news.  Into the void steps WikiLeaks, the online invention from a convicted Australian hacker named Julian Assange, who has made a venture out of publishing top secret documents.  He’s a muckraker using modern technology, doing work the mainstream media won’t do anymore.  This week WikiLeaks published dozens of documents from the U.S. government about the war in Afghanistan.  That after the Obama administration tried to find him and arrest him for pilfering, to stop him from publishing.  They couldn’t find him.  But try as they might, there’s no stopping the “new champions of media freedom,” according to the Chicago Tribune.  As the traditional media falters, someone on the Internet is going to publish the docs.  That’s the way it goes in the new media world.  Now every government document, no matter how incriminating, may end up on our laptops.  This, as I said, changes everything.

According to market research, movies in a theatre can be a bore for young people practiced in the art of texting, talking, facebooking – and watching a movie at home, all at the same time!  So in order to lure young people back into the theaters, Paramount Pictures has a new idea – sing along movies.  Just recently, “Grease: Sing-A-Long,” a re-release of the 1978 movie starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton John, premiered in cities around the country.  By adding lyric subtitles to the screen, audiences can sing along with the songs as they are being sung on the silver screen.  Audiences (yes, young) are flocking to the shows, dressed in costume, of course, making it a “true event” movie, according to Adam Goodman, President of Paramount.  Sing-A-Long movies are the strategy of the week.  No more “Shhhh” at the movies.  Now it’s “Belt it Out!”

As the Tour de France started last week, Floyd Landis, who won the 2006 Tour but had it stripped away after it was confirmed he was doping for the races, took dead aim at Lance Armstrong, the winner of six Tours, claiming that Lance has been doping all along.  Now Lance is the most tested man on earth, and agents barge into his house at all hours demanding instant urine tests.  In all the years they have been trying, they have found absolutely nothing.  Now that doesn’t mean that Lance has never doped, or that he’s not doing it without being detected.  But most people don’t think he’s done anything, at least since he started winning ten years ago.  He’s just a remarkable athlete.  But that hasn’t stopped Landis, who lied for two years before admitting his doping.  If he’s going down, Lance is too.  But last week all of Lance’s endorsers, RadioShack, Anheuser-Busch, 24 Hour Fitness, and Nike, said they were sticking with him, saying the charges are not substantiated.  They did, however, say they will take a wait and see approach, meaning that if the smoking gun appears, they’re out of here!  Landis probably doesn’t have anything on Lance, or it would be out by now.  But last week’s Strategy has the big advertisers sticking with Lance, at least till tomorrow.