« October 27, 2003 | Main
| October 29, 2003 »

October 28, 2003

Revolt against the editors
: There happens to be a lot of sniping at editors going around.
Here's Mickey Kaus firing one shot.
Here's Virginia Postrel taking aim with Norm Geras and others firing.
Stephen Green adds his gunpowder.
Not a growth industry, that.

LINK | Comments (3)

New Hampshire bound
: In no time flat, Josh Marshall raised more than enough money to send him to New Hampshire to cover the primary exclusive for his weblog readers. The audience has spoken!

LINK | Comments (2)

'Suiciders'
: I think George Bush just coined a new word for the suicide bombers (I call them human bombs) terrorizing the Middle East. In his press conference, he called them "suiciders." I thought it was a slip and then he called them that again. "Suiciders."
"Murderers" is still more accurate.

LINK | Comments (13)

Star bloggers
: Kaye Trammel is doing her dissertation on celebrity bloggers (that is, celebrities who blog... though I would have thought that bloggers who become celebrities would be interesting, too.). So send her suggestions.

LINK | Comments (5)

After the attacks
: Zeyad is pissed and for damned good reason. His view after the human-bomb attacks on Iraqi and outside civilians is that it's not about Saddam anymore:

This Saddamophobia has to stop. Suicide attacks are carried out by you-know-who. This is Bin Ladens gift to his fellow Iraqi Muslims. Didn't he say it himself a while ago?
I demand that all Iraqi diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and Syria cease immediately. I demand that we expel all foreign Arabs from Iraq until further notice. A little firmness is necessary. We can't just sit and wait for the next attacks.
Iraq should resign from the Arab League which is just a symposium for dictators. Who the hell needs it anymore? They didn't even officially show sympathy for Iraqis after the attacks. They should be considered the enemy unless they act promptly to secure their borders and ensure that no Mujahedeen sneak through to Iraq daily. They are the ones to blame. We all know they have an interest in keeping up the attacks and the chaos. They are aware of the fact that they are next on the list after Saddam. They will pursue every possible effort to make the Iraqi example fail.
When attacks are carried out in other Arab countries they consider it terrorism, but in Iraq it is resistance against the occupying Americans.

LINK | Comments (2)

What if the public hates public affairs?
: I dread Sunday mornings because TV and radio are filled with alleged "public affairs" programming, which is really just dutiful crap meant to appease bureaucrats and pressure groups. There are racial and ethnic segments that are essentially insulting to their apparent audiences (if the story is worth doing, then do it in prime time; don't ghettoize it here). There are political round-tables that make me want to crawl under the nearest table and fall asleep (and you wonder why people don't vote). And there are interviews with nut jobs pushing some nut view (just to stop them from bugging the newsroom, no doubt). I can't stand any of it. Public affairs programming has absolutely no value to me as a member of said public.
But there are forever pushes for more of it: programming by quota.
The Washington Times (of all publications) reports on a study by the "Alliance for Better Campaigns" [beware "alliances" for they are the folks who fill Sunday morning with snoozes] arguing there's too little public-affairs programming:

Broadcasters have relegated local public-affairs programming to the very bottom of the heap — behind cartoons, kitchenware specials, reruns, courtroom dramas, dating shows and late-night talk shows.
The modest showcases for community issues account for less than one-half of 1 percent of local TV programming nationwide, said the report, released Friday by the Alliance for Better Campaigns, a Washington-based public interest group.
There is "a near blackout" of local politics by broadcasters, the study said.
Out of 7,560 hours of programming analyzed, 13 were devoted to local public affairs, it said. Forty-five stations in six cities were studied from Oct. 5 to Oct. 11.
The analysis found, for example, that there were three times as many "Seinfeld" reruns as local public-affairs shows on TV stations nationwide.
There were four times as many cartoon shows, seven times as many pro football games, nine times as many dating shows, 19 times as many late-night talk shows, 20 times as many courtroom dramas and 23 times as many soap operas.

Hello? Where have you been? Shall we give you three quite obvious facts here:
1. TV is a business. It needs to make money. It makes money by giving the audience what it wants.
2. The audience wants entertainment. That's why TV gives the audience Seinfelds and football games.
3. The audience doesn't want public-affairs programming. The proof of that is in the ratings.
Reality check.

: But now let's pull that stick back and, from a higher elevation, ask what the appropriate outlets are for public affairs content and programming.
The FCC's mandate that TV stations had to have public-affiars programming as part of the public-service obligation of their license is outmoded. Media has leapfrogged it. Cable came along. The Internet came along.
And the truth is that TV is not the ideal medium for pubic affairs programming. That's because TV is first and foremost an entertainment medium, more than an information medium or an interactive medium. Second, broadcast TV hits too large an audience to be able to find and serve the various publics in fact interested in public affairs programming. Third, public-affairs issues are more local than a broadcaster's range. And fourth, public-affairs should be interactive; it should be about discussion and involvement, not about broadcasting.
Clearly, the Internet is a better medium for public-affairs issues and it is already doing a better job of serving the public interest in these areas -- without any FCC mandates. Local and special-interest weblogs and web sites present information and dialogue about issues.
So perhaps the broadcasters should be freed from their public-affairs obligation. You could go the route of the BBC and try to create public-involvement web service, but I wonder whether that's still not so much artificial insemination. Perhaps TV stations should just go about their business as TV stations and their audiences will tell them when they serve their interests.

LINK | Comments (6)

Robbed
: Can somebody explain to me how I can have 682 inbound blogs on Technorati and still not make the Top 100, where five have fewer than that? I'm getting a complex.

LINK | Comments (9)

Dig a whole deep enough and you'll find a blog on the other side
: Glenn Reynolds links to some pissiness about a CNN International feature about a Hong Kong blogger. Nevermind the complaints.
Big White Guy is a very good blog by an expat in Hong Kong. He gave us lively coverage during the Sars epidemic. He was ahead of all major media on the story of the Hong Kong story using swastikas in marketing. He blogs well.
No need to be jealous of somebody else getting airtime. What's good for one is good for all here in this new world.
(You can watch the feature on his site.)

LINK | Comments (5)

...
Gawker stalked
: For reasons that will become clear next week, I ended up hanging out with a half-dozen bloggers yesterday. You'll note that no one blogged it; too intimidating. But I couldn't resist pulling out the camera phone and stalking Gawker, turnabout being fair play. So here's Nick Denton, hiding from the press. And there's Choire Sicha reading Details -- yes, Details.

: Note also that Denton is finally getting ready to take the wraps off of his high-class porn blog, Fleshbot.

LINK | Comments (5)