BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

August 05, 2003

Bravo
: The Episcopalians redeem themselves and elect an openly gay bishop.
Let the bigots scream and leave; let them show themselves.

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How to fix AOL, part II
: AOL is releasing its Communicator email/IM client. I've been using the beta for a few months now and I have to say it's very good.
(I know this will look as if I'm suddenly shilling for AOL, having just written about their weblog/journal tool and now this -- and I do own too damned much of the stock -- but it's just a coincidence.)
Communicator acts like a real mail client -- like Outlook (though, unfortunately, tragically, it doesn't come with a calendar) or Eudora -- but adds important pluses: You can check any POP email (this is how I read my personal mail) and it does a good job of nabbing spam (getting about 85 percent, I'd say; you can have it hide the spam or just mark it and then you can delete it all with a click). It operates well. It acts like an Internet program, not like an AOL program. It tells you in email whether your IM buddies are online.
That's the good news.

: The bad news is that AOL is sticking with its old business model and is giving this only to full AOL subscribers.
I've said before -- and will say again now -- that AOL would be far better off unbundling many of its services and not trying to get everyone to gulp down the whole service:
: I'd pay a few bucks a month for the AOL mail service with Communicator and its spam program.
: If I were a new blogger, I'd pay a price competitive with TypePad's for AOL's new journal service (with unlimited bandwidth: a slam-dunk!).
: I'd pay AOL for downloaded music as readily as I'd pay Real or BuyMusic.com.
The reason I do pay for the AOL service is my job; I need to keep up on what they're doing. If not for that, imagine that I were no longer an AOL customer. Then wouldn't AOL be better off selling me a part of its service than the whole service? Wouldn't AOL be better off maintaining a billing relationship with me so it could sell me more things -- including content under a micropayment model (which, in turn, would drive content owners to work with them)? Wouldn't it cost AOL a helluva lot less to market a simple email service to me to get me in the door and then upsell me later?
Shouldn't AOL think of itself as the Amazon of content and services -- we will sell you anything with one click?
AOL is stuck with its old model -- one big size fits all -- and its numbers are declining as a result. Broadband growth is only adding to the pain.
If AOL made it a goal to sell all of us something and have a billing relationship with more and more people it would start to grow again. And Wall Street would be happy. And that would make me happy.

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The land of no news
: It's amazing that right now, the top story on the Guardian, the Times of London, the Telegraph, and the Independent is No. 10 apologizing for calling timid suicidal science snitch David Kelly a "Walter Mitty" character, complete with sidebars answering the question, "Who is Walter Mitty?" and comment and transcripts aplenty.
Man, news days don't get slower than this.

: The Sun, on the other hand, reports on the fired-then-cleared TV hosts 3-in-a-bed kinky sex secrets while the Mirror reports on the secrets of Kylie's bottom. Secrets uncovered! Now that's news.

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Who says bloggers have no class?
: Two long-former colleagues of mine, Terry Teachout and Greg Sandow, have blogs at ArtsJournal.com, Terry's about arts in New York, Greg's about classical music.

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Iron Mike rusts
: The Smoking Gun has Iron Mike Tyson's bankruptcy filing, of course. Some fun reading:
: $308k for limousines
: $61lk for a Ferrari (what, you need both?)
: A financial consultant called Jimmy Henchmen from a company called SECRETS. Hmmmm.
: And here's the gem: $86k to two Arizona doctors who, upon Googling, turn out to be the creators of something called The Fourth Domain:

This series of meditation exercises is based on the research of two leading mental health professionals who have merged the medical understanding of brain functioning during the altered states of meditation with ancient prayers of empowerment.
The first exercise is a dynamic meditation exercise, which enables you to make the spiritual space necessary to achieve Divine Awareness. On this journey, you will learn to relax the body and mind to prepare your receptivity for Divine Awareness. Drs. Barksdale and Gibson have discovered the unique spacing and timing of sounds to allow you to consistently maintain the convergence and balance of your physical, mental and spiritual domains. This balanced convergence is the 4th Domain. The ancient prayers of the Kabbalistic and Shinto Metaphysical Traditions are employed to further open you to Divine awareness.

Hooboy. Yeah, money well spent.
And for only $250, you can get a "soul potential report" to find out where your soul is when you're sleeping.

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What big media?
: Robert J Samuelson says the big media boogieman is bull.

The idea that “big media” has dangerously increased its control over our choices is absurd. Yet much of the public, including journalists and politicians, believe religiously in this myth. They confuse size with power. It’s true that some gigantic media companies are getting even bigger at the expense of other media companies. But it’s not true that their power is increasing at the public’s expense.
Popular hostility toward big media stems partly from the growing competition (a.k.a. more “choice”), which creates winners and losers—and losers complain. Liberals don’t like the conservative talk shows, but younger viewers do. A June poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that viewers from the ages of 18 to 29 approved of “hosts with strong opinions” by a 58 percent to 32 percent margin. Social conservatives despise what one recently called “the raw sewage, ultraviolence, graphic sex and raunchy language” of TV. But many viewers love it. Journalists detest the cost and profit pressures that result from stiff competition with other news and entertainment outlets.
It’s the tyranny of the market: a triumph of popular tastes. Big media companies try to anticipate, shape and profit from these tastes. But media diversity frustrates any one company from imposing its views and values on an unwilling audience. People just click to another channel or cancel their subscription.

Pardon me while I commit the bloggers' most obnoxious sin but... I've been saying exactly this.
Samuelson also says that the supposed backlash over the FCC's deregulation of media is overblown.
And he warns that broadcast TV is in danger -- thanks to competition from cable and the Internet -- and if Congress prevents TV companies from owning more stations to stay profitable, then broadcast TV could whither. "If Congress prevents that, it may perversely hurt the very diversity and the people that it’s trying to protect." Amen. [via IWantMedia]

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Rescue Lileks
: James Lileks is still drifting on a raft without a server or a site.
Yo, James, I'm sure many of us would be privileged to act as your backup: Send your bleats to a few blogging friends and we'll post them. (And, no, this isn't a shameless bid for traffic. I simply feel like a Jewish mother whose son stopped calling. The silence. The silence.

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Ah, irony
: Maciej Ceglowski points us with glee to "an essay about the importance of linking to others, where all the hyperlinks just point back to himself. You can't make this stuff up."

: I want to make clear up here on the front page, and not just in the comments, that I'm not bashing, criticizing, ridiculing, or otherwise piling on Dave Winer with this. I know I'm linking to a piler-on. But I wasn't piling. As I say in the comments: The irony is cheap, I grant, but I found it funny. It's a good-natured rib, nothing more.
And I'm saying this out here, to be clear, just because the butane has been turned up high lately and I understand Dave interpretting a rib as a jab. It's not.
Everybody clear on that?

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The worst job in journalism II
: Tim Porter goes to the fraternity of ombudsmen (a fun group) to get career advice for the soon-to-be-named New York Times ombudsman. I would suggest Tums and a good shrink.

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