« October 05, 2003 | Main
| October 07, 2003 »

October 06, 2003

We serve no whine before its time
: Tim Porter tells newspaper old fogies (read: Barrie Hartman) to stop whining:

...he's wrong that penurious publishers are to blame for readership woes.
It's time to drive a stake through this excuse, quit the whining and deal with the real problem - atrophied newsroom cultures that discourage innovation, don't reward risk-taking and drive out the too many of the best and brightest younger journalists, all of whom entered the profession aware of the paltry pay scale, with rigid hierarchies.

There's another business issue to deal with: added competition from the Internet and consolidating retail are affecting revenue and bottom lines more than any bean-counters. This is a business.
Tim's right: Whining won't solve anything. But the Web might solve a few problems if they're viewed creatively as new sources of information and content. starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (0)

Listen, Ma, I'm famous
: Chris Lydon interviewed me and put it online. I'm honored. I just hope he found a technology to slow me down. I talk fast. A editor friend of mine once said I talk in JPEG. I talk like a URL: no spaces. Go listen, if you dare....starry night pro 4.5 emule

: Update: The streams from most of the sessions of Bloggercon are now online here. I talked fast at the Day 2 presidential politics and blogging session. I look forward to watching the ones I missed. You should do ditto.starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (0)

How to blog for profit
: Matt Haughey tells you exactly how.starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (0)

Mirror, mirror, on the web
: Roger Simon calls out Peter Jennings.
: And Ted Barlow, in turn, calls out Roger Simon in the comments.
We link, you decide (on absolutely no evidence, but, hey...)starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (2)

The leftist pro-spam meme
: There's a strange meme aborning: Leftists coming out against do-not-call lists and spam protection because they are a form of so-called censorship.
Here [via Richard Bennett] is John Gillmore (the EFF nut with the hijacker button):

The default should be that
sending emails -- commercial, charitable, governmental or otherwise --
should and must be legal. Just as sending verbal messages in person,
that is, approaching someone to speak, should and must be legal....
Citizens want cheap communication... They want to be able
to send any message they want, to any people they want. They just
don't want to receive all the messages that the other six billion
people want to send THEM. "Free speech for me, not for thee" is
what's going on here. The entire idea of regulating the sending
of email should be dropped.

And then here's Douglas Rushkoff:

So what I'm wondering is how the expansion of do-not-call registries may curtail the crosstalk required for democracy to take place. As I noted in a post last year, do not call and online 'protection' programs already tend to censor traffic dealing with environmentalism, feminism, anti-war demonstrations, and pretty much any progressive agenda. Might do-not-call registries, and do-not-spam laws to follow, have a debilitating effect on our ability to send messages to one another about things much more important and controversial than the mainstream media is willing to report?
The email carrying a link to the Observer article alerting me to Arnold's pre-candidacy meetings with Republicans for the reduction of Enron fines (see link above) was duly filtered by my ISP's spam program.
I hope it's just the flu-like disorientation, but I fear a legislator I don't agree with someday defining spam in the same way they used to define porn: I know it when I see it.

Jeesh. These guys can make anything -- even penis enlargers -- PC.
Listen, guys, I want -- no, I demand -- a way to keep from getting disturbed on my phone in the privacy of my home on the line I paid for by phone calls I do not want. They are invading my home and privacy. Don't you guys fight for privacy? Fight for mine.
I demand the ability to stop people from sending me mails the clog my computer and the communications lines I pay for kill the usefulness of email for legitimate personal and business purposes. They are stealing my resources. And they are invading my privacy by grabbing my private email address that I did not give them. Don't you want to fight for my rights?
Most of all, I demand the right to stop these slime from sending sexual, violent, disgusting email to my children. Don't you want to protect children from horrible, demeaning pornography that is abusive to women? Or would you rather save whales?
Instead, you envision a world in which any nut, huckster, criminal, crook, pornographer, or stinking slime is free to approach me on the street or in the privacy of my home or my business just to protect against what you call censorship. This isn't censorship. Censorship is when the government decides what can and can't be published. I don't want the government to decide. I want to decide. And my rule is simple: If I didn't give you my email address, don't send me your spam. If I didn't give you my phone number, don't bother me with your calls. And if you do walk up to me on the street, I will ignore you and keep walking, as is my right (and training as a New Yorker).
We, the people are demanding a stop to these calls and emails. If you were truly populists, you'd be listening to what the people are saying. starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (9)

Donny and Mike
: The self-referential media world is buzzing about Michael Wolff, New York Magazine media columnist and pet bulldog, joining up with ad bad boy Donny Deutsch to try to buy the publication.
I'd die to attend their staff meetings.
I ran into Donny during the launch of Entertainment Weekly, when he and his agency handled our trade advertising. There were the usual agency pitch meetings (in the days before PowerPoint and Flash) with a small platoon of adheads and presentation boards aplenty.
Then came Donny. He interrupted the proceedings to shout about the magazine: "This is the best f'ing idea I've ever heard.... This is f'ing great." He f'ed his way into the contract. I still have buttons, cocktail napkins, posters and more with the slogan he created. (Time Inc. got my magazine. I got souvenirs. Maybe I should sell them on eBay.)
About that time, he got the Ikea business and as we sat in my office, I pointed to something I'd gotten there and then proceeded to admit that I was so impressed with Ikea's worldview that I ended up going to Sweden on vacation and I named -- with the silly names -- all the cheap furniture I'd just bought from Ikea for my new house. I was an Ikea stalker. I thought Donny should be impressed. Instead, he shook his head and said, "You are seriously f'ing disturbed!"
Donny -- like Michael -- has always rubbed some people the wrong way, but I liked him and his bluntness. And he has proven to be a marketing genius. Can he be a media genius? Maybe. Last year at the FourSquare conference (where he and Wolff shared the stage), he said that advertising has to invent new forms to be discovered. He bragged about making musical stars with his car commercials; he was jealous of BMW's online car movies.
Whether it's New York or not, it would be fun to watch Deutsch -- even more than Wolff -- run a media enterprise. He'd surely find new ways to market the product to readers and advertisers and he'd find new ways for them to market inside the product. It'd be f'ing entertaining.starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (3)

Conflict o' interest
: The Guardian has an excerpt from Michael Moore's latest book (his stupid seven questions for George Bush) and an interview and a headline that calls the book "brilliant" and even created a special Michael Moore page for those who just can't get enough of the man who can't get enough of himself. No surprise there.
But what shocks me is that the paper then turns around and flacks for Moore commercially, promoting a give-away of Michael Moore prizes -- no, not a diet book but a ticket to a Moore appearance (oh, joy) or one of his books or tapes. This strikes me as unseemly. Should the L.A. Times be giving away Arnold Schwarzenegger DVDs? Should the New York Times be raffling off a date with Monica Lewinsky? Should the Guardian be using its editorial space in print and online to shill for the products of someone who is, a column-inch away, being interviewed as a news subject.
In a word: No. Tsk, tsk.starry night pro 4.5 emule

: In the interview, Moore says he's trying hard to recruit Oprah to head the Green Party presidential ticket in 2004.
Only if Dr. Phil will be her running mate.starry night pro 4.5 emule

: I was going to invest the sweat and effort in fisking Moore's seven questions but Tim Blair did a much better job of it than I would have. starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (8)

Toys for peace
: There's now a beautiful site telling you how to give toys to children in Iraq via Chief Wiggles, who also promises one-stop-shopping soon. starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (1)

Cut the yeast
: Oliver Willis cautions that blogs don't cure cancer.starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (0)

Chicago wi-fi hotels
: Fellow connectivity-addicted travelers, who can recommend a Chicago hotel with high-speed access in rooms that's convenient to Evanston for the Online News Association confab I'm attending? They put it in a hotel without Internet access; the Hilton in town doesn't have it yet and then there's the vast North Side, which has changed since I left town, oh, 25 years ago. starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (7)

Blog PR
: As I said in the post below, NYTimes.com Editor-in-Chief Len Apcar came to Bloggercon to learn about weblogging but he got a fringe benefit: good PR. Besides Jay Rosen's post, see Glenn Reynolds' praise for "the best overall newspaper on the Web," and Chris Lydon's interview with Len. starry night pro 4.5 emule

LINK | Comments (1)