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October 29, 2003

The blog capital of the world
: New Yorkers and San Franciscans are known to debate whose city is the blog capital of the world.
They're all wrong.
It's Tehran.
Hoder reports the opening of a Cafe Blog in Tehran -- not just an Internet cafe but a blog cafe! Hoder didn't just start a weblog revolution in Iran, he started a weblog industry. Photos from the opening here.

I'm not sure if there is any Cafe for bloggers in other cities, but there is one in Tehran. Actually it's recently opened in a northern area of Tehran and Ive heard that it's quite popular among Tehranian bloggers. It's called Cafe Blog and based on the website, they held some basic technical workshops for their members....
I wish I could have a trip to Iran this year. But it's too dangerous these days.

Well, after the revolution, when it's safe to go, bring back a T-shirt, willya?

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Whereabouts
: I'm at a two-day confab and stuck on dial-up so I'll be blogging when connected....

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Post-online newspaper
: Steve Outing outlines his post-online newspaper vision here. I put the start of my vision here.

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Two bits on audience
: I just saw (thanks to Lost Remote) that Reese Schonfeld, a cable news pioneer from CNN, has a blog -- Me And Ted -- and in it, I find two noteworthy observations:

:First, on the audience for FoxNews:

Meandted.com readers may recall that I have wondered from whence the FoxNews viewers come.
I finally have an answer; it is uncorroborated and single source. I have not checked it out with FoxNews. My source is an occasional consultant to NewsAmerica, FoxNews’ parent company. She told me that Fox had looked into the question and most FoxNews viewers had switched from broadcast stations....
This makes some sense to me. Many years ago Paul Klein, one of the smartest men ever to work at a broadcast network, invented the theory of “Least Objectionable Program.” In the days of just three networks, he said viewers watched programs, not because they liked them, but because they didn’t dislike them.
I think that six years ago before FoxNews was launched the people who are now watching FoxNews couldn’t find any news network that satisfied them...

And this on the real source of bias -- the audience:

Journalistic “objectivity” is unachievable because objectivity is a two-way street. Both the newspaper and its reader have their own definition of “objectivity.” The same is true of television and the viewer. In each case the audience defines “objectivity” as the point of view that most closely mirrors his own prejudices.
On Thursday, the press reported that 44% of those polled thought the media was too liberal. 16% thought the media was too conservative. 39% thought the media was right on. Brent Bozell, who represents the conservative side, said during the show that 40% of Americans identified themselves as conservatives, 20% identified themselves, as liberal and the rest were moderates. Compare the sets of numbers: 40% are conservative – 44% think the media is liberal. 20% is liberal – 16% think the media is too conservative. 40% is middle of the road, 39% think the media is middle of the road. I think this proves my theory and I am very, very happy....
Given the above, it’s time for U.S. media to forget “objectivity” and just let it all hang out.

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Case closed
: Detective Jay Rosen gets the Times Siegal Report back online.

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French-fried fool
: Fast-food paranoid Eric Schlosser disses his fellow Americans to all Britain in, of course, the Guardian:

I can't remember another time when having an American accent provoked as much immediate hostility from Brits of every race, creed, class, and sexual orientation. If you're an American, overseas, in the fall of 2003, you've got a lot to answer for.
If I could fake a British accent with any skill, I would now. It would save a lot time....
It's easy to hate Americans today, as the United States plays the global role Great Britain once did, opening new markets for investment, maintaining access to valuable commodities, and crushing anyone who poses a serious threat to the world order.

[via au Currant]

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Does he inhale?
: Howard Dean has called himself a metrosexual:

Dean declared himself a "metrosexual," the buzz phrase for straight men in touch with their feminine sides, as he touted his accomplishments in "equal justice" for gay and lesbian couples.
But then he waffled.
"I'm a square," Dean declared, after professing his metrosexuality to a Boulder breakfast audience with an anecdote about being called handsome by a gay man. "I like (rapper) Wyclef Jean and everybody thinks I'm very hip, but I am really a square, as my kids will tell you. I don't even get to watch television. I've heard the term (metrosexual), but I don't know what it means."

Ewww. The thought of anything ____sexual and Howard Dean brings up forbidden visuals. Keep it in your pants, Howie. [via Aaron Bailey]

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Let's all make campaign commercials
: Ed Cone finds the latest from MoveOn: a call to make a 30-second commercial that "tells the truth about George Bush," the winner to be judged by Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Jack Black, Janeane Garofalo, and Gus Van Sant and aired on TV during the week of the State of the Union address.
I think it's time to brush up on my vlogging.
Somehow, I don't think I'll win.
But why don't we all sit down in front of the camera and make the commercials that should win.

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Celebrity junkies
: Courtney Love has been busted on drugs:

Prosecutors Tuesday charged singer-actress Courtney Love with two felony counts of drug possession.... She stands accused of possessing painkillers -- Hydrocodone and Oxycodone -- without a prescription.

She faces more than three years in jail.
And so what does Rush Limbaugh face for acquiring thousands of the same pills?
Howard Stern said this morning that Jeb Bush can't exactly be out there saying he's tough on drugs but light on Rush.

: Steven Johnson on the coincidence.

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Who's a reporter?
: In a wonderfully candid post about himself and his weblog today, Zeyad, the new Iraqi blogger, says:

...I must reiterate that I am not a journalist. I'm merely trying to give you an idea on how the average Iraqi think about such events, or what kind of stories are circulated on the streets.

I must disagree. Zeyad is a journalist in a new (or very old) definition of the word. He is a reporter and is proving to be a damned good one.
Zeyad is reporting what he sees and feels and hears -- and thinks. He is the witness who tells the world what is happening around him. Just like the consummate pro Tish Durkin (see the next post below), he is doing a great job of trying to put us there in Baghdad, so we have a better idea of what is happening. That is a reporter's job.

: A few days ago, Zeyad had a post about a story circulating in the city, of a woman who supposedly brought a baby to a hospital wrapped in explosives. Says the tale: "After questioning the woman she confessed that the baby was kidnapped and that some Arabs had offered her a considerable amount of money to get the baby inside the crowded emergency hall in the hospital, leave it there and they would do the rest."
Having seen this nowhere else, I wrote it off at the time as urban legend. I figure there must be enough urban legend going around in Baghdad to choke Snopes.
What's interesting is that today, Zeyad addresses the issue of whether this story is credible or whether it is urban legend. He doesn't know.

Iraqis have been talking about it since Friday. Nobody has either denied or confirmed it officially. I also read about it in Azzaman, an independent Iraqi newspaper published in Iraq and the UK and edited by Sa'ad Al-Bazzaz a highly respected Iraqi journalist. Saddam's Mukhabarat agents tried to assasinate him more than once in both Jordan and the UK. They never print urban legends or rumours. It is currently the number one newspaper in postwar Iraq. I highly doubt they would publish such a story without sufficient evidence. I tried hard searching for other sources but without any luck.
I didn't make up the story. And I would never put propaganda on this blog. You can check it out for yourself on their October 25 edition (if you can read Arabic).

So Zeyad is learning to do what a reporter or an editor should do: check his stories. He is a journalist.

: There are more interesting notes in the post about the Riverbend blog and the blog that now mocks it.
Also, note that Zeyad has put up a biography of himself, with a picture.
It seems to me that he is being as open as he can.
There've been a few trollish posts on my blog about whether he's legit (a kneejerk response after those questioning Salam Pax -- all of whom were wrong). Well, I haven't met him and so I can't give you his DNA. But I haven't met Atrios or Andrew Sullivan, either, and I think they and their opionions are legit and worthwhile. You know Zeyad as well as I know Zeyad. I say we're lucky he's there.

: I've been engaging in a lot of excited blather lately about citizens' media and citizen journalists. This is why. Yes, it's exciting for me to see new layers and levels of information and perspective that can emerge now that the people formerly known as the audience have history's easiest publishing tool connected to history's best distribution network. It's exciting to see that in a town in America. But it's particularly exciting in a town in Iraq, where we can certainly use new levels of information and persective, especially from the people most affected. All the people who give us that information are reporting so we can decide what we think the real story is.

: Yes, Zeyad is a journalist. He's turning out to be such a good one that I just sent him email asking whether he really wanted to be dentist afterall.

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It's about the people, stupid
: In all the rhetorical, ideological, and political catfights occurring over Iraq and the U.S., what is most disturbing is that the fate of the Iraqi people is too often forgotten (especially, I'd say, by those who supposedly had their interests at heart -- and you know who you are).
How ludicrous to be running anti-war rallies after the war is over. Day late, placard short.
What we should be doing now is falling over ourselves to be the ones who helped build the first successful democracy and well-rounded economy in the Middle East. Instead, everybody's yelling so loud about their divorce they're forgetting to feed the kids.
Tish Durkin finally captures this in the New York Observer:

Most of the people outside Iraq seem to be obsessed with giving the Bush administration what they think it deserves. Most of the people inside Iraq—i.e., the Iraqis—are fixated on getting what they think they deserve. For all too many champions as well as critics of U.S. policy, this is all about American vindication versus American mortification, and Iraq is a car to be stripped down for its rhetorical parts. Some parts make the Americans look good, so the White House and company take those and wave them around. Other parts make the Americans look bad, so the antiwar crowd takes those and waves them around. Still other parts—most of the car, of course—are harder to classify, or are subject to change from one week to the next. These pretty much get junked.

For the Iraqis, who tend to view this as a place and themselves as people, both sets of analysts are transparent opportunists. Nonetheless, from here, it is disturbing to note the momentum that seems to be gathering behind those who are back home chanting for the U.S. to get out now. It is scarcely less disturbing to contemplate the belief of some leading American politicians that they can go halfsies: keep funding Iraqi reconstruction, for instance, but put the funding in the form of a loan. (Whoever thought of that probably had a cash bar at his wedding.) This is not because the occupation is some sort of triumph. But if this is about the Iraqis, it simply doesn’t matter whether it is in the context of American glory, American gloom or something in between that these people finally get a decent shot at a decent life. It only matters that they do get it, and the only question is how.

Tish is reporting from the ground in Baghdad and here are her five conclusions now:

One, most Iraqis do not want America to leave now or very soon. Two, while it is true that a huge proportion of Iraqis have at least some very negative opinions about the war and life here since, it is also true that a huge proportion of those opinions boil down to anger at the Americans for not being enough of a presence here, not anger at the Americans for being too much of a presence. Three, there is very little to support the notion that Iraqis would be, or feel, notably better off under United Nations occupation than under a United States–led occupation. Four, although the Bush administration should be hung out to dry for whatever it has lied about, it is widely accepted here that various of their pet assertions happen to coincide with the truth. Iraqis do not need Mr. Bush to tell them that most of the troublemakers here are not resistance fighters, but highly paid, often imported thugs; Iraqis have been saying that from the start. Fifth, a steady stream of terrible events has generated a steady stream of legitimately negative news stories about Iraq, the sum effect of which seems to have been to leave the rest of the world with the impression that Iraq now appears in the dictionary next to "unqualified disaster"; that hardly anything is improving here, and that hardly anyone.

And she concludes this scolding view of the grownups' bickering:

In or out? Aid or loan? It all adds up to asking: Which one should win the right to say "I told you so"?

It's a beautiful piece of reporting with a strong and credible viewpoint.

: I should add that I knew Tish when. At the start of Entertainment Weekly, we hired her out of college as an editorial assistant and during the interview, I still remember sitting there with jaw dropped thinking, "This woman is going to be a star." Got that one right.

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