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BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis
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February 29, 2004
I'm not alone
: The very sane, civilized, nice Doc (as opposed to the insane, uncivilized, nasty me) agrees with me on Stern. And he is now deprived of his right to listen to Stern because he lives in a Clear Channel market. [Permalink not working]
Death to the consumer
: I was just thinking how wrong the word "consumer" is today -- especially in the world of news, information, and media. For we don't just consume anymore; it's not a one-way world now. We produce. We report. We write. We edit. We improve. We amend. We remix. We comment. We argue. We correct. We distribute.
And then I saw Paul Ford say: The word "consumers" makes me sad for this world. Whenever someone tries to convince you of advertising's nobility, remember that word -- the industry looks at you and sees not a human, but a gobbling creature with money to spend. Kottke adds: I can't recall where I heard this, but my favorite definition of a consumer is "a wallet with a mouth". And then I saw Ernie Miller at Corante riff beautifully on the matter of consumption versus whatever it is we do now: ...We aren't at the beginning of an era where we numbly accept content. The beginning of that era was when Edison first set stylus to wax cylinder, the beginning of the era of mechanical reproduction. It was an era of unchangeable physical format that could only be produced and distributed efficiently en masse. That era is dying.
After less than a century of dominance, I believe that people are waking up from the consumerist coma induced by the era of mechanical reproduction. What we are seeing is the birth of a new era, an era of empowerment, where people are both consumers and producers of content, a wonderful bricolage of both old and new. Blogs are one example (if you are reading this, you aren't reading only what traditional publishers put out), but so is the Grey Album, Phantom Edit, machinima, and the whole modding community (among others). We need a new word for what we are and what we do in media. I despise the word " prosumer." It reminds me of "proactive," an awkward, made-up, management-meeting word I refuse to dignify with use.
I call this world of weblogs, forums, wikis, videologs and all that "citizens' media." But what do we call the citizens, the former members of the audience, and what do we call what we do in this new, two-way media world?
Blog the government
: Tom Watson, the blogging MP in the UK, [as opposed to this Tom Watson] notes that daily press briefings at No. 10 are put up online in an unreadable form, so MySociety takes this info and reformats it into a blog, making it more readable and allowing the citizens to comment.
Forcing reform online
: A good round-up story on the role of online in Iran's real reform movement by Luke Thomas at Salon. For those who've been following this story here, there's not a lot very new and it all but ignores weblogs and the strong voices that are making a difference there. Nonetheless, it's an overview of why the net matters to this (and thus every) democracy emerging from repression: But the real story is that by blocking free and fair elections, clerical hard-liners have driven dissent online -- lighting up thousands of alternate channels of communication for the Iranian people.
In Iran, the Internet is becoming the most successful route around oppression. It gives ordinary Iranians access to real news and information. They can express their opinions freely and communicate with their countrymen residing in nations all around the world.
Indeed, the more the government cracks down, the more Web sites dedicated to changing the system spring up. There are now dozens of Web sites providing news and views in the local Farsi language.
February 28, 2004
The dog ate my ballot
: Australia requires voters to vote. But some make excuses: A woman claimed she was having group sex with 30 men in Nimbin, NSW, and could not get to a polling booth in Queensland on time to vote.
That is the all-time best excuse, according to electoral commissioner Bob Longland.
 Coincidence?
: Does that image look familiar? It looks quite like a storyboard for Mel Gibson's Passion, perhaps? Nope. It's part of the story of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein as told by Hammorabi in a long and illuminating post. I said below that I saw eerie similarity between the blood lust of Passion (and, as a commenter points out, Christian self-flagellation) and the self-flagellation we've seen in religious processions in Iraq.
See also Zeyad's story of his amazement at seeing a procession of the faithful beating themselves on their backs in perfect rhythm. "The most comic incident was that my Christian friend got a bit dizzy and almost threw up while he was witnessing the scene. He was really freaked. 'You'd better get used to it' I told him later that night. 'Expect a lot of this stuff every year from now on.''
Everywhere
: There's a robust free weblog service in Romania. [via Blogalization]
Stern
: More from Maher's show this week: Maher says he no longer does Stern's show and doesn't much like him but defends him against Clear Channel. Speaking from his own experience being yanked off a network, Maher, says, it seems it's the people who don't hear you who get you yanked. Christie Todd Whitman is on the panel and says she doesn't listen to Stern but his endorsement did make a big difference in her election victory in New Jersey and she said Clear Channel will come to regret the decision economically.
Teaching blogs
: An Austrian university is giving a course in weblogs and online journalism. (auf Deutsch)
Ralph as comedy
: Ralph Nader was on Bill Maher's show talking about a Chinese bird flu as a weapon of mass destruction. He's sounding wackier and wackier.
Maher tells him that voting for him the last time now "seems like a bratty indulgence."
It's Ralph's birthday as he's on the show and Bill gives him a birthday cake: a pinto with the candles burning at the rear end.
Internationalism
: Loic Le Meur, head of UBlog in France, is going to Germany and he has set up a wiki (thanks to Joi) to plan the trip. Heiko says the list of folks he's visiting is turning into a who's who of German blogging mafia (though he's missing some key players in Berlin), which is just the point. Damn, I wish I were along on that trip. Prosit, alle.
(Some more who ought to join in: David, Andrea, IT&W, der Schockwellenreiter, Scott, Moe, Volker, to name a few, not including the Swiss and Austrians.)
From Iran
: Hoder points us to a weblog by a journalist blogging from Tehran, Omid Memarian.
: And I just noticed that the big Iranian portal, Gooya, now has an English version! (There's a French version, too.) It's a very good service that gets lots of traffic from the very large Persian online community.
It so happens that Gooya is edited by her brother, whom I met last fall.
The Jewish perspective
: Jewsweek, the wonderful online magazine, devotes itself entirely right now to Mel Gibson's Passion.
Editor Benyamin Cohen's review: Well, after walking out of an advance screening, my first comprehensible thought was this: I really want to kill a Jew.
In recent interviews, Gibson has been uttering the following mantra: "Wait until the film is released. You'll see that I don't blame the Jews." Well, Gibson not only goes out of his way to blame the Jews for Jesus' brutal crucifixion, but he goes so far as to portray the Romans as unwilling accomplices, which is, with certainty, a willful distortion of the original text. Meanwhile, Gibson depicts most of the Jews as an angry lynch mob which gains pleasure from watching a man writhe in pain and flood the ground with blood. It would take an act of God to incite more anti-Semitism than this film is sure to ignite.
But putting false claims of theological culpability and biblical fidelity aside, the film suffers from poor storytelling. Since the movie only depicts Jesus' final hours, we are given no background -- why did the Sanhedrin want him dead? What crimes did he commit to deserve such a gruesome death? All we're shown is these mean Jews who want to murder this nice young man.
... [B]y reducing the film to just twelve brutal hours, Gibson has, unfortunately, undermined Jesus' spiritual qualities and squandered an opportunity to create a unique cinematic and profound religious experience. Instead, he opts to turn the story of Jesus from one of intense spirituality to one of brutal violence. The film feasts on the physical torture and not the metaphysical elevation. It's Gibson's obsession with sadomasochism on display for everyone to see in all its, um, gory.
This does a horrible disservice to the Christian community. By transforming the story from one filled with hope to one mired in rage, Gibson is teaching a new, and violent, Christian doctrine. Contrary to what you may have learned in Sunday School, he seems to be saying, Christianity is based on revenge, not love. This is nothing short of an embarrassment to our Christian brethren. This reminds me of one thought I had during the film: The fetisishtic treatment of violence and blood reminded me of nothing so much as the unleashing of self-flagellation by certain Islamic sects. It emphasizes the virtue in suffering and pain, in blood and violence -- rather than the virtue of good acts and a gracious heart. And that is troubling.
: Jewsweek's blog points us to the official Mel Gibson Passion souvenirs, such as this pewter spike -- just like the one nailed into your Christ's hand -- on a leather necklace. Only $16.99. Oh, man.
: And there is an excerpt of a book on the Oberamergau Passion Play; a feature on the Jewish actress who plays Mary; a story on Mel Gibson's father's infamous anti-Semitism; a backgrounder on the story of the Passion by a Columbia religion prof; a state-of-anti-Semitism story; a story on Mel's side; and many columns. An impressive report and I'm only halfway through reading it.
Ah-choo
: Prince Charles writes in the Guardian that we are becoming allergic to our Western lifestyle: The rising trends in allergy seen in developing countries, as they adopt our western habits, point strongly to factors in the way we live. We spend up to 80% of our time indoors, and the sealing of our houses to conserve heat and energy, the increase in soft furnishings and the rising numbers of pets all increase the chance of those genetically at risk becoming sensitised to domestic allergens such as dust mites, moulds, cats and dogs. Similarly, at work, increasing allergies give rise to the "sick building" syndrome. But increased exposure to allergens cannot be the whole answer, because we are also becoming susceptible to outdoor aller gens such as pollens, and to certain foods, especially fish, fresh fruits and vegetables.
RSS fame spreads
: Now the AP writes about RSS. [via Scoble]
Amen to that
: Censorship will grow if bozos have their way. Some on the FCC would leach out past the public airwaves to private wires. And once they start censoring cable, I'll repeat, watch out: Your weblog could be next.
Ernie Miller outs one bozo on the FCC who's leaching: What Part of the First Amendment Don't You Understand?
Im talking to you, FCC Commissioner Kevin J. Martin.
According to a Reuters wirestory posted on Infoshop, Martin wants the FCC to consider regulating indecency on satellite and cable (FCC's Martin ponders indecency on pay TV, radio).
Let me think about that ... um, no."Cable companies need some way to empower parents and families to have more choice," Martin said. "I think that it has the potential to be a problem when they are receiving things they object to and have to pay for that." It's called stop paying for cable, Martin. It's called a lockbox, Martin. Its called the First Amendment, Martin.What a maroon. : One more thing: One of my loyal commenters has taken me to task in email for only mentioning the Bush and Republican bad guys in this fight.
Right. I should mention that I've long called Rep. Ed Markey of the other side one of the most dangerous men in Washington. Some years ago, on a John McLaughlin show, I went ballistic against Markey over the V-chip and his desire to blacklist and censor media.
More youth blogging
: Two significant developments for taking blogging younger: Bravenet, which for a long time has provided web-site add-ons (forums, chats, polls) -- has started a blogging (aka journaling) tool. And Tucows, the huge software download site, has just acquired Blogrolling.com. Bravenet and Tucows are both big services, particularly with younger users. Blogging has gone mass and the mass keeps growing.
Drat
: Iranian radio reported that bin Laden had been caputured in Pakistan. U.S. officials deny it.
: Meanwhile, The Times reports: President Bush has approved a plan to intensify the effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, senior administration and military officials say, as a combination of better intelligence, improving weather and a refocusing of resources away from Iraq has reinvigorated the hunt along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The plan will apply both new forces and new tactics to the task, said senior officials in Washington and Afghanistan who were interviewed in recent days. The group at the center of the effort is Task Force 121, the covert commando team of Special Operations forces and Central Intelligence Agency officers. The team was involved in Saddam Hussein's capture and is gradually shifting its forces to Afghanistan to step up the search for Mr. bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the former Taliban leader.
February 27, 2004
Deaniacs' quandry
: Dean blogger Matthew Gross has his former colleague Mark Sundeen blog about the choice on Super Tuesday: With Super Tuesday a few days out, I'm facing a question I didn't expect: who should I vote for?...
But even now, with Dean out of the race, many will still vote for him.... I think the majority of those voting for Dean know he won’t win enough delegates to impact the convention. They are voting for other reasons: protest, loyalty, conscience, because they've worked hard to build this campaign and because they want to vote for a candidate in whom they believe....
So would a vote for Edwards be any more practical than a vote for Dean? I don’t know that Edwards can actually overtake Kerry, but I would like to see the debate and the race continue as long as possible. If progressive votes are split between Edwards and Dean (and Kucinich) on Tuesday, Kerry will wrap up the nomination, and Bush and Rove will roll out the cannons. As long as there's a contest, more Democrats will be engaged, and the Party will retain the national stage—a stage from which it can continue to shine the light on Bush's disastrous presidency and build the case that a Democrat can do better. Practical politics has a conscience, too.
Just me
: I supported the war and people called me a right-winger and refused to accept my liberal credentials. Now I go after the Bush administration over free speech and Howard Stern and also don't like Gibson's Passion and the right-wingers call me a left-winger. Those who hated me one week love me the next; those who loved me one week hate me the next; and a few smart people sit back and laugh. Life becomes very confusing when you have only one litmus test by which to judge mankind.
Befuddled about business and blogs
: Are you a big business or brand befuddled about blogs (and sick of this alliteration)? Go high Hugh MacLeod, who just put his shingle out to take his (a) copywriting experience and (b) blog expertise, not to mention (c) his marketing smarts, and (d) his cartoons for good measure and offer his services to companies wanting someone to create a blog for them. Go here.
Let's hope they have no headlines from which to rip
: George Bush and Tom Ridge have a West Wing to call their own: In what would be a highly unusual action for a president, George W. Bush is apparently giving the White House seal of approval to a television series, D.H.S.--The Series, a drama about the Department of Home Security being introduced Thursday night to prospective networks at an Industry gathering.
President Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge both "endorse and contribute sound bites to the introductions of the series," according to the show's producers. [via IWantMedia]
Nice guys do finish first
: David Weinberger, one of the smartest and nicest people I've been in this here 'sphere, is appointed a Harvard Berkman fellow. Bravo.
More on the meltdown
: There's ever more comment on the Eli Noam piece in the FT that said we're in an information-industry meltdown. David Isenberg has weighed in twice. Om Malik has more links.
I sent Noam email with links to all the blog comments on his piece and an invitation to coffee. Never heard a thing.
Irony
: Isn't it ironic that at the the same time Clear Channel kicks Howard Stern off their air, it sponsors a screening of Mel Gibson's Passion, a movie that is being condemned in many quarters for stirring up anti-Semitism.
I'll defend Gibson's right to make the movie, anyone's right to show it or see it, and Clear Channel's right to sponsor a screening.
But let's note that many of the same people who are flocking to the movie who are complaining about Stern.
I know my pointing that out will drive some of you nuts so consider that stipulated. I just could not resist pointing out the irony. (And thanks to the reader who brought it to my attention.)
: Jay Rosen says in comments below that whether Clear Channel succumbed to government pressure is a "reportable story."
Not sure I agree. Clear Channel is not going to acknowledge publicly that it acted sheerly for political reasons and to give it lobbying juice. Nor is anyone in government going to brag about censoring media directly.
But we do know that Clear Channel bumped Stern the day after its executives where called to Woodshed, D.C. to testify before Congress.
We do know that executive acknowledged to Congress that Stern has not changed his act at all but that Clear Channel has decided to change its rules.
And we know that Stern says Clear Channel told him they were doing this because of government pressure.
So sometimes, all a journalist -- and, more important, a journalist's readers -- can do is put two and two together. Clear Channel pulled Stern the day before the testimony before Congress and the testimony before Congress comes after the Janet Jackson breast flap and that's the only thing that has changed; Clear Channel acknowledges that Stern hasn't.
It adds up to government pressure and a government-induced chill on speech to me.
: Glenn Reynolds (who also rocks) says I am over the top on Stern. Well, I think Glenn's over the top on the Second Amendment. Different things push our buttons.
Glenn seems to think that this just a matter of a media company deciding to kill a show I like. But it's not. It's much more than that. A media company can kill shows anytime -- but Clear Channel didn't. Again, the company acknowledges before Congress that Stern hasn't changed a thing. The company decided to pull the show only after it came under the thumb of government pressure.
I do not want the government deciding what I can say and what I can hear. Period.
Government interference in free speech does put me over the top. You bet it does. This is not about poop jokes. This is about nothing less than protecting the First Amendment.
You have your amendment, Glenn, my friend. And I have mine.
: Howard Kurtz says: "Does anyone detect a pungent whiff of hypocrisy?"
: UPDATE: Motley Fool agrees with my analysis out of the whole Stern et al flap: Buy satellite stock.
Who's the devil?
:
Mel Gibson's Passion would make me an atheist. Who would chose to believe in the God he portrays -- a God who demands such incredible suffering of his own son to balance the sins of man?
Gibson's Passion would make me a Jew. For if this is his view of Christianity, then maybe it's wrong and I'd want to revert to the previous version of religion.
Wouldn't that be ironic if Gibson's Passion turned people away from God and Christianity? It would do that for me if for one moment I thought that Gibson had some hold on the truth.
But I went to see a very late show of Passion last night and I was appalled. It was more abhorrent and disturbing and disgusting than I ever would have imagined. It borders on hate speech in its portrayal of the Jews and in its effort to whip up hatred. This is a movie the Nazis would have made or at least endorsed.
Now I'm not calling Gibson a Nazi. I'm not sure about calling him an anti-Semite. In his mind, he thinks he's telling the truth about the events of Christ's Passion. But that mind is skewed to make this all about violence and vengeance -- the Jews' and ultimately God's -- and apart from a token moment on the Mount and the postscript at the end, nothing about grace and redemption. The result is a truly frightening portrayal of violence against Jesus and of Jews that, I fear, will lead to hate crimes.
Many other reviewers have dissected the movie better than I can or care to. I went to see it (my wife thought I was nuts) just so I could write this after having seen it.
I left the theater angry -- not at Jews or Romans but at Gibson.
The RSS revolution!
: Hoder sees the Yahoo RSS aggregator as a powerful weapon against government censorship. When Yahoo -- rather than a user in Tehran -- gets an RSS feed of a forbidden site and the user reads it via Yahoo, then the mullahs are powerless to block the free flow of information. Now, of course, other web-based aggregators offer the same detour around the censors but Hoder says that Yahoo adds extra oomph because he doubts that the mullahs have the balls to try to block it. Praise God and pass the XML.
I need a subscription consolidator
: Reading an out-of-date Fortune at the pool on the last day of vacation today, I was struck by a tech trend in "subscription burnout" and immediately conjured up a new business category:
Subscription consolidator.
Once upon a time, McDonald's had problems with truck deliveries all day long taking up staff time (first ketchup, then mustard, then pickles...) and so they created a whole new industry: The freight consolidator, who accepts all those deliveries and puts them together so a McDonald's can accept just one delivery with everything.
Fortune made me think I need the same thing for all my many subscriptions and the benefit could be that it would prevent burnout.
Consider my many paid subscriptions:
- Cable (or satellite) with many channels.
- Internet access (high-speed and dial-up for road trips).
- Internet services (AOL, Yahoo mail, Real video).
- Home phone.
- Mobile phone.
- Mobile phone Internet services.
- Software (licenses for may Treo functions, for example).
- Many newspapers.
- Many magazines.
- Internet content (not much: Wall Street Journal, for one).
- Satellite radio (contemplated, especially if Stern bolts).
- TiVo (contemplated).
- Audible (rejected because of bad customer service).
- And on and on.
: So what about a service that consolidates and bundles many or most of these subscriptions (as a debt consolidator consolidates debt) and offers me great deals (e.g, if you like ESPN, you might like this great online sports service for a special bundled price).
Advantages to consumer: Less hassle keeping track of -- and renewing or being harrassed by -- so many subscriptions. Less sense of being nickel-and-dimed to death. More sense of control. Better deals, attractive bundles.
Advantages to subcription company: Greatly reduced marketing costs as subscribers are acquired -- and renewed -- by the consolidator. New marketing channel to new subscribers and for upsells to existing subscribers.
Advantages to content industry: This creates a new channel for testing and launching new products. It could even be used to launch microsubscriptions (as opposed to micropayments): Subscriptions to new online products -- yes, even weblogs and RSS feeds -- could be sold as an add-on or added-value bundle.
: Take the problem of subscription burnout -- and it is a very real problem -- and find the business opportunity: Your personal subscription deal-maker.
I'd sign up.
: UPDATE: Forgot to mention that, of course, AOL Time Warner should be the perfect agent to do this since they have pieces of so many subscription products but, of course, they couldn't figure it out within their own company, let alone without. I was there when it added the Warner and they never could figure out how to spell synergy, let alone do it.
Rafat Ali likes the idea and wants an established company -- an Amazon or Yahoo -- to fill the role because he doesn't trust his data to a startup. Maybe. Another question is whether an established company is in a better position to deal with all the other established companies or whether it takes a new middleman; this is a dog-eat-dog world.
In any case, Rafat picks up on the important point: We need to look at this from the consumer perspective. And from that perspective, there is a subscription industry and it needs to get its act together to avoid burning us all out.
February 26, 2004
Free speech makes strange bedfellows
: Rush Limbaugh issues a ringing defense of Howard Stern and free speech. Stern has been very critical of Limbaugh but Limbaugh clearly sees there are bigger issues at risk here.
: Says John Robb: "This is entirely driven by Congress and the FCC and not as some Republican apologists claim a purely corporate free speech issue. All the big media companies are scared to death that the government will shut them down (mergers/growth and current business)."
February 25, 2004
The death of broadcast
: Clear Channel has cut off Howard Stern. When Janet Jackson's outfit opened, it opened a door not on her breast but on censorship. Clear Channel even sent out a press release bragging about cutting off Stern. MarksFriggin, the unofficial Stern site, says those stations are in Pittsburgh, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, Rochester, Louisville and San Diego. Clear Channel also fired Bubba the Love Sponge.
: Here's how I predict this will play out:
- Stern will engineer his firing from Viacom.
- Stern will sign with satellite, giving satellite the boost it needs to become a viable business.
- Buy satellite stock now. Sell radio stock now.
- Broadcast radio will quickly falter, losing attention to MP3s, satellite, and cellular broadcast. Broadcast radio will die. Consolidation won't kill it. Censorship will.
- Satellite will grow rapidly, getting more consumer revenue and ad revenue.
- Broadcast TV will suffer similar blows.
- Cable and satellite TV will grow.
- The bottom line: Any medium that can be government-regulated will shrink; any medium free of government regulation will grow.
- Government censorship will grow until, at long last, libertarians and Republicans and Democrats wake up and realize that this is not the role they want for government, this is not the America they envision. But in the meantime, they will have destroyed a medium or two.
: And why don't you tell the FCC what you think. Here's how.
I don't need a government nanny, do you? I didn't think so.
: The more I think about this, the more enraged I get. One tit flopped out and the government -- the Bush administration -- can't wait to play to its far-right fringe and censor speech and intimidate speech and chill speech. How dare they? This is not the role we expect of our government. We don't need a nanny.
Let's hear a little liberartarian outrage at government meddling in our lives and our speech.
Let's hear a little conservative outrage at government growing beyond its bounds.
Let's hear a little liberal outrage at goverment stiffling free spech.
I don't give a damn whether you like or despise Howard Stern; that's beside the point. If you're American, you cherish free speech and you should be appalled at what is happening to it. This is not coming from media consolidation. This is coming from government intimidation.
F Michael Powell. F the FCC. F Clear Channel.
Defend Howard Stern. Or lose your own rights to say what you want where and when you want to say it.
: I know that many constituencies want to tell Clear Channel to f off. Here's where and how.
: UPDATES... There are calls for me to answer the many comments on this post. I'm traveling today and so I don't have time to say much until later. But a few basic observations:
- Yes, Clear Channel is a company with the full right and responsibility to decide what to put on its air. But that's not what's happening here. The government is behind this. The government called broadcast chieftens to the woodshed and they came back vowing to avoid further government censure. Mel Karmazin of Viacom, owner of Stern's station, held a conference call threatening to fire DJs, program directors, and general managers who are even the subject of complaint.
The government tried to put a chill on speech. And it worked.
And that should chill you.
- Don't like Stern? Fine. I understand. Don't want to defend Stern? Ok, but what happens when they come after somebody you do like. What happens when Bill O'Reilly slips one day and says something that offends someone in a gotcha way and that's just the excuse somebody needed to demand that he go off the air. Or Andy Rooney. Or Dan Rather. Or Al Franken, once he's on radio. Doesn't matter what your political stripe is; it's all speech and once it can be shut off for one guy it can be shut off for the next.
Defending free speech almost always starts with defending those whose speech you don't like -- but if you don't defend that speech, then you defend no one's speech.
When I grew up, the ACLU defended the noxious speech of the KKK to march in the heavily Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie. It was necessary to defend the principle even with them so as to defend the rights of antiwar protestors or civil rights protesters or, in latter days, abortion protestors to protest.
If you don't defend Stern agains the government chill, then you open the door for someone you like to be taken off the air.
- Yes, they are public airwaves. That means they belong to me, too. I want to listen to Stern. You don't. Fine. Change the channel. We have lots of them.
- I abhor this culture of offense. We are becoming ruled by what offends a few of us. If it's offends somebody, then it must be wrong and it must be shut up.
Well, I don't need anyone -- government or corporate nanny -- to protect me from that which might offend me. I can take care of myself and respond myself.
- I have been far, far more offended by things I have heard Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson say on our public airwaves but I have not called for them to be banned, even though they are more disgusting and hateful than Stern has ever been.
- Hiawatha Bray, a good technology reporter for the Boston Globe (his blog here) leaves a comment saying good riddance to Stern. Fine if you feel that way. But what happens when people get offended by something you say, Hiawatha? There's something bigger happening here and it has an impact on our business, on media, on journalism, on the press. Danger lurks here, colleague.
- See Micah Sifry on Clear Channel. See Adam Curry. See Tony Pierce.
- Have to go. More later....
'All marketing should be permission marketing'
: Ten years ago, Procter & Gamble CEO Ed Artzt gave a now-legendary speech shaming the ad industry into innovating and embracing new media. I was starting online then and it made waves.
Now, 10 years later, another P&G exec, Jim Stengel, gives a followup speech to the industry and gives them a bad grade, a C-, for their efforts so far.
A few good lines: In 1994, we anticipated an explosion in TV channels, resulting in significant fragmentation in viewers. Today, the average U.S. household has more than 90 TV channels—this is up from an average of 27 channels in 1994. Share for the big four networks during primetime has dropped from 52.4 percent to 30.6 percent.
Specialized networks offer advertisers access to more segmented audiences, but in much smaller volume. And we’ve lost whole segments of consumers whose needs aren’t being met by today’s programming. We must accept the fact that there is no “mass” in “mass media” anymore, and leverage more targeted approaches. And I especially like this: All marketing should be permission marketing. All marketing should be so appealing that consumers want us in their lives. We should strive to be invited into consumers’ lives and homes.
When we think of permission-based marketing, most of us think about opt-in online newsletters. We really need to expand this mentality to all aspects of marketing. We must develop creative that both maximizes the channel and appeals to the consumer. For each element of the marketing mix, we should ask ourselves “would consumers choose to look at or listen to this,” and let that be the benchmark. I like that: All marketing should be permission marketing. Right.
Yet I think he's still not looking at that from quite the right perspective. Almost, but not quite. He's still thinking about all this in terms of old-time creative and old-time media: Is our commercial good enough to show you?
Instead, they should be thinking: Is our information good enough to serve you? And he can even start to think about having mutual friends (see Chris Locke's Gonzo Marketing on the idea of underwriting citizens' media).
For this new medium offers more than eyeballs. It offers relationships. And, more important, it offers the consumer control.
So rather than trying to create a commercial you force upon a consumer that so darned good he might tolerate if given a choice, realize instead that consumers do now go to advertising when it's useful: I go to Handspring's site to learn about and buy their phone.
More important, I go to fellow consumers -- with whom I have a relatsionship of trust -- to learn about products. I went to the TreoCentral forums to learn more about Handspring's phone before and after I bought it.
That's a helluva different from happening to see a good commercial about the phone.
That's the future of marketing.
As Fred Wilson said one morning, "The push model of advertising is over. It's over. It's just a matter of time before people realize it. It's toast."
Government in exile but online
: Yesterday's Times noted ousted Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori's use of the Internet to try to rebuild his political base from exile: His energy is focused, though, on a thin laptop computer, with a freestanding microphone and a Web camera perched like a Cyclops eye. A blue data cable serves as a high-speed umbilical cord to Peru, 9,000 miles away.
Alberto Fujimori is a political exile in the age of the Internet.
Wielding what he calls this "powerful instrument" over the last year, Mr. Fujimori, former president of Peru, has parried an Interpol arrest request, started a political movement in Peru, maintained his "From Tokyo" Web site, and transmitted programs for his new hourlong weekly radio show, which is broadcast on 60 stations in Peru.
"I live as if I were in Peru, but without the physical contact with the people," said Mr. Fujimori, who took up residence in Japan, the land of his ancestors, in November 2000 as his administration fell apart during a corruption scandal. "Five years ago, this would have been unthinkable." In the case of Fujimori, the technology is being used by a disgraced loser. But the same technology can be used by most any outsiders to get inside. The Iranian bloggers are, of course, using this to build the political future of their country (and they have something wonderful underway you'll hear about soon). The irony, of course, is that Ayatolla Khomeini had to build his base and power from exile and would have found all these tools quite powerful; now they will be used by the citizens he exiled to change the regime he created.
February 24, 2004
Next generation blogging tools
: Answering Dave Winer's invitation and challenge, here is a first wishlist of functionalityi for the next generation of blogging tools (more to come):
: A tool so incredibly simple any child or non-Internet, non-PC user could figure out immediately how to use it: Oh, I put this there and I can get to it from anywhere.
"This" can be text, a photo, a sound, a video, a shopping list, a school paper, anything.
"Put" can mean type or drag-and-drop or even the dreaded "browse."
"Get" can mean that from a simple address on a simple page, I can find this thing again or send my friends there to find it.
"Anywhere" means it should be accessible from the web or mobile phones or RSS or whatever.
: The tool should be easily translated into ANY language on earth. That is how we will change this world, when blogging tools work in Arabic and Korean and Chinese of various stripes and Balkan languages and such.
: Distributed posting. My blog should be not only what I put on my blog but what I put elsewhere -- a comment on your blog, an article in the paper, a review on Amazon, a song on iTunes. My blog should be able to aggregate all the things I create anywhere with nothing more than a simple identification that it's mine.
: I want to be able to publish video easily but without going bankrupt on bandwidth (p2p time).
: I want a one-size-fits-all ping: Ping this site and it will, in turn, ping everybody else. Pinging is getting to be time-consuming. No reason it can't be standardized and worked out in a cooperative P2P relationship among all the pingees.
: Jay Rosen's request: He wants the tool to list all the links he uses (because, he says, this will create the curriculum for a course).
: I also want the tool to compile all the links I use to tell me which sites are the most fruitful for my linking; this is another way to prioritize and value my blogroll.
: Make it easy to post from any mobile device at any length with any media type.
: Make it easy to read from any mobile device.
: Give me very, very powerful tools for managing comments: Let me see all comments, all comments today, all comments from a given commenter, all comments that use this word...
: Let readers see just comments from those who use their identities (or all comments).
: Allow the option of threaded comments (to deal with the size of a BlogFor America).
: The problem with tracking blog links is that we assume they are all positive. Of course, many are negative. We want to capture that difference. Technorati has a suggested standard but it requires tagging smarts. Build it into the tool: Instead of one link button, give me three: positive, negative, neutral.
: I want to drag and drop material from a web page into my blog post: Put this here, put that there. I'd like split-screen blogging: web page on the right; blog post in the same browser on the left (so I don't have to keep toggling back and forth) and I can mark anything and drop it over with a link included.
: Failing the idea above, I want somebody to get a good means of multiple cut-and-pastes, so I can in one swoop get all the quotes and links I want from a web page and insert them into my browswer in whatever order makes sense (without having to remember them all). So let me cut a dozen quotes and links and then show them to me in my blog tool and let me insert each easily. That is far more fluid that what I have to do now: go to browser, cut, go to blog, paste, go to browser, cut, go to blog, paste....
: For the good of this new medium and industry, create standard traffic measurement for weblogs so we know who reads what when. We want to know that for our egos. Advertisers will want to know that. We can show the way for every other medium, online and off, and create great and standard reporting tools. It will benefit everyone.
: Create hooks for each post that can be used -- at the blogger's will, of course -- for targeted searching and targeted ad calls (e.g., find all posts this guy wrote about this; put ads on posts this guy wrote about that).
: Extend David Galbraith's one-line-bio to allow bloggers to put up resumes and life stories and personal ads, whatever they choose. Let them describe themselves as well as their work and let them be found.
: Create automated, intuitive categorization of posts, with manual override (e.g., let the system guess that this post is about blogging and technology).
: Find new words that will make sense to the world for "RSS" and "permanlink" and "XML" and "blogroll."
: Let me reverse-subscribe my blog -- that is, let me contribute it or certain posts to a conference blog without anyone having to go to the effort to compile and aggregate posts from that conference. If I wanted to say that I have a relevant blog for an event or a cause or a candidate, let me join in with one click (and if someone is running or moderating that aggregation, let them decide whether to let me into the club).
: When I come to something interesting, I often wonder whether it has already been blogged to death (and what others are saying about it) before I decide whether I want to blog it. So I'd like to see a distributed Technorati, a page rank with substance: When looking at a NY TImes story, I see that 23 bloggers have blogged it and with a click, I can see who has blogged it and what they say.
What else?
: UPDATE: Add Howard Rheingold's good request for better blog comments, including the ability to subscribe to a thread and keep the discussion going.
Hate
: It should come as no surprise at all that Alternet picked up John Lee's kneejerk hate speech. You'd think they would not want to devalue the word "racist" with this casual crap. But then, it's Alternet.
Gay marriage and Bush
: If I ever harbored a thought of voting for George Bush (which I am not sure I honestly ever did) it disappeared today when he went ahead with threats to try to enact a constitutional amendment against gay marriage. Good God, you harp against those who would extend the Constitution to mold it to their beliefs and here you vow to amend it to do just that. You say you want less involvement and interference from government and yet you bring government into the bedroom. You talk about bringing the people together and yet you will set upon a long war to drive us apart. You deny that you are ruled by religion but you would have your religion rule us.
The passion
: I have not seen Mel Gibson's Passion and certainly don't want to but probably will feel as if I need to so I can write about the film rather than write about those who are writing about it.
Today's reviews are disturbing because Gibson wanted so badly to make his movie disturbing. He told Diane Sawyer last week that he wanted it to be shocking; he wants to emphasize the pain and sacrifice of Christ.
I'm not sure why.
Does making us 20 percent more disgusted make us 20 percent more holy? Does it make us 20 percent more angry? 20 percent more humble? 20 percent more grateful? Why revel in the violence so?
Judging by the reviews, it doesn't seem to enlighten us more on the meaning of the crucifixion.
I've never fully bought the idea that Christ had to die for our sins. Had to? That would make it seem as if God planned and willed that; hard to believe a father would do that to his son (and that doesn't speak well for our fraternal relationship, does it?). And I still can't fathom the logic of dying for our sins -- why, because God demanded some vengeance?
Only lately have I come to view the crucifixion in a new light: It is the ultimate guarantee of our free will. If God would not intervene in our murder of his son, then he would let us get away with anything. He would let us get away with the Holocaust, by the way. We are that free.
Whatever your interpretation of the crucifixion and the resurrection, I'm not sure how they are better served by recording and dramatizing and amplifying the violence of it (if not to make us angrier at those who perpetrated the act). Still, violence was Gibson's goal and judging from the reviews, he succeeded. A.O. Scott's review in tomorrow's Times: "The Passion of the Christ" is so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus' final hours that this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it. Mr. Gibson has constructed an unnerving and painful spectacle that is also, in the end, a depressing one. It is disheartening to see a film made with evident and abundant religious conviction that is at the same time so utterly lacking in grace....
His version of the Gospels is harrowingly violent; the final hour of "The Passion of the Christ" essentially consists of a man being beaten, tortured and killed in graphic and lingering detail. Once he is taken into custody, Jesus (Jim Caviezel) is cuffed and kicked and then, much more systematically, flogged, first with stiff canes and then with leather whips tipped with sharp stones and glass shards. By the time the crown of thorns is pounded onto his head and the cross loaded onto his shoulders, he is all but unrecognizable, a mass of flayed and bloody flesh, barely able to stand, moaning and howling in pain. And here's Jonathan Foreman in the NY Post: In "Passion," the relish for pain and bloody cruelty that has marked his career as both a director and an actor - a relish that would almost be sensual in the hands of a less vulgar artist - boils over into a full-blown fetish.
The relentless whippings, beatings and scourgings (the latter is barely mentioned in the Gospels but takes up a whole reel of film) start early and then intensify, in slow-motion and close-up, with the impact of each blow amped up like in "Rocky."
Eventually, "Passion" becomes a kind of pornographic catalog of Christ's suffering. And like pornography, it's initially powerful but eventually becomes numbing.
This would matter less if there was much else in the film besides blows and slashes accompanied by gasps of pain and ribbons of blood. (The procession to Calvary is a kind of orgy of savagery.)
What distinguishes the film from the long tradition of gruesome martyrology in religious art is its lack of any sense of the meaning or reason for Christ's sacrifice.
The message of Jesus' death is all but drowned in Gibson's morbid enthusiasm for shots of metal tearing flesh, as if Christ was crucified so that Gibson - along with his hard-working make-up and sound people - could indulge his obsession with torture.
Help: Mail problem while using AOL as ISP
: I'm away, forced to use AOL as my ISP (sadly) and now I suddenly can't use any of my email programs or mail servers to send email; none can connect to my SMTP servers. I seem to remember an AOL issue here (of course). Any advice??
The Internet: Bigger than cable
: The Internet is now bigger than cable, according to eMarketer (via MediaPost and LostRemote). ...eMarketer now estimates U.S. household Internet penetration is about 67.9 percent. That compares with a 65.8 percent U.S. household penetration level for cable, according to an eMarketer analysis of Nielsen Media Research and U.S. Census data.
More significantly, Ramsey noted that while cable TV penetration has essentially been flat at about 66 percent of U.S. households, online penetration continues to expand....
“Wow,” said Jes Santoro, vice president-director of integrated media at Earthquake Media, a media shop that buys traditional and online media, upon learning of the online penetration milestone from MediaDailyNews. “I think it is very significant. But it’s symbolic as well.”
“It’s symbolic because it speaks to people’s media consumption habits,” he explained. “Think about cable, you kind of have to have it to have it to get TV reception. It’s almost like a utility. But with the Internet, people go out and get it because they want to use the Internet.”
eMarketer’s Ramsey agreed, noting that it was similar household penetration milestones that first got cable TV on the map with Madison Avenue during various junctures in cable’s history.
: Oh, but that's not the half of it. They're only counting homes and every single Internet business I know (even Nick Denton's work-unsafe Fleshbot) sees its prime time at midday, during work, where almost anyone sitting at a desk now has high-speed Internet access.
So the penetration is higher than the numbers above indicate. And the usage is higher.
Internet will get greater mindshare and greater share of the audience's attention because cable and TV and radio can't reach them at work, but the Internet can.
: Let's repeat that again: The Internet is bigger than cable TV. And so the Internet should be getting a much bigger share of advertising dollars.
The next generation of blogging
: Dave Winer is asking bloggers to dream of the next-generation tools they want for the form (in preparation for the next BloggerCon). Good question; good idea to talk about it in the open: open-source invention by the mob. Leave comments here or there for what you want to see in blog tools; I'll do the same later.
February 23, 2004
Reporting
: Instapundit sent around email on the case of the mysterious, oft-quoted Republican/independent. I emailed the man to see which he was. Campaign Desk, to their credit, actually picked up the phone to call him. The results: Will the real George Meagher please stand up? As it happens, he will; Campaign Desk called George, and he was happy to talk. He is an independent, he says, and has "never been a Republican" because he dislikes "labels."
[NYTimes reporter] Rosenthal admits she made a mistake, citing Meagher's involvement in Bush's 2000 campaign (which she mentioned in her Sunday piece) as the root of her confusion. She says that the two different quotes were pulled from the same interview, conducted during the run-up to the South Carolina primary. Meagher says he can't remember exactly what he said nearly a month ago, but he confirms he was interviewed just once.
A correction has already been written, and will be printed in tomorrow's Times.
The virtues of the two-party system
: The accepted wisdom of blog comments and forums these days is that the two-party system is unnatural and even evil and that's why it's OK -- nay, somehow nobly virtuous -- for Ralph Nader (or Pat Buchanan or Ross Perot or John Anderson, in their times) to run, albeit futiley -- even destructively -- from a third party. And anybody (e.g., me) who complains about that and the impact it has on the real race is accused of trying to stifle free speech and democracy and -- gasp! -- defend the two-party system.
Well, let me stand up bravely in defense of that two-party system.
First, let's recognize that this is not Europe or much of the rest of the parliamentary world, where the people elect parties over individuals and where coalitions put together governments (which can easily fall apart) and the winning party, instead of the voters, often selects the nation's executive. In Germany or Italy or Israel, you can vote from among a few liberal or conservative parties but once you do, the leadership of the government is out of your hands. Still, this does mean that, in Germany, for example, you can vote for the Greens with some confidence and good conscience that, if they're big enough, they can join with the liberals and in the end, you're still supporting a left-leaning government and your party leaders are at least part of the government's cabinet. A vote for the Greens is a vote for the left, not a vote discarded.
That's not the way it works here, of course. We elect one person for President and that has nothing to do with which parties win elsewhere.
This means that our system forces voters to make a choice -- but at least it's our choice.
When it comes to the presidency, only one person can win. When it comes to Congress, for that matter, only two parties can efficiently win, given our system of majorities and supermajorities needed to get the work of the people done and given the fact that governments won't fall because of any legislature's failures or whims and given the size of the country and the cost of running for office and marketing a message here. The same system operates down to the state and local levels.
And that system works. It is more stable and effective than any other you can name.
But, again, the system forces us to make a choice. We get a long time to make that choice. We get a long (albeit too long and too expensive) campaign season to push and support (and defeat) candidates. We get to push special-interest candidates to push the agendas they represent. That is how we build coalitions; that is how diverse interests get represented; that is how change erupts. That is why, for example, Al Sharpton and Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman, losers all, are telling people voters that the best way to change the system and get represented is to do it from within the party, not without. They all tried to win the top spot. But they lost. Yet they all believe they influenced the debate and the election and the winners. So votes for them were still votes for the left and not votes discarded.
But once it gets toward the end, things change. I'll say it once more: You are given a choice: Do you want George Bush? Or do you want a Democrat. It's a simple, if sometimes tough, choice. But it's our choice. To avoid that choice is wasteful and sometimes petulant and immature and occasionally even destructive.
If you truly can't stand George Bush yet you vote for Ralph Nader and allow Bush to get elected -- the first or second time -- then you have done worse than thrown out your vote, you have given your vote to your opposition and proven and changed nothing in the process.
If you are Ralph Nader and you say you want to defeat George Bush yet you're the reason George Bush got elected the first time and you could be the reason he gets elected the second time, well, then you are nothing but an egotistical, petulant, selfish, short-sighted, destructive, pathetic, hanging-on has-been and hypocrite.
Ralph Nader is absolutely free to make his choice to reveal himself to be such a twit. And I am just as free to call him a twit. He can campaign. I can complain. But if he continues to run and if too many vote for him and if those votes could have swung the election, well, there's no running away from the choice -- the moral choice -- and and those who voted for him made to avoid the real choice, the mature and necessary choice they were given this election.
But I have faith in the voters that they saw Nader for what he was the last time around. I believe he'll be humiliated as he deserves to be with a pathetic and embarrassingly small vote this time (and Howard Dean helped assure that outcome today). I don't think this election will be the mess the last one was.
For the system works. The two-party system works.
 Hyperlocal
: I'm proud of what I'm seeing on the hyperlocal blogs at my day job. Here's a sampling NJ.com put out there today:
: Notes on the new WalMart in town and pictures of the school science fair and more.
: A new town firehouse.
: A report on an elected officials' $26 omelet on a junket (from a competitive paper, even, via another Jersey blog).
This may not be news to you but it is news to the neighbors in these towns.
Losers hang together
: Lloyd Grove, bloggers' favorite punching bag, is so desperate to find anybody else who's a loser like him that he gives publicity to the scurrilous hate speech from John Lee glibly throwing around the word racism as if it were meaningless.
To all my German blogging friends...
: Loic Le Meur, head of UBlog (the French blogging company) is coming to Germany to expand his empire and plans to set up some blogger dinners and meetings. I met Loic at ETech. Extremely nice guy; loves blogging; well poised for international expansion. So keep track of his schedule on his blog and leave him comments there....
Good for you, Howard Dean
: A few days ago, I said that Howard Dean should come out urging his supporters not to shift their support to Ralph Election Spoiler Nader.
Well, Howard Dean just did it. Good for you, Doc. Those who truly want America's leaders to stand up to the corporate special interests and build a better country for working people should recognize that, in 2004, a vote for Ralph Nader is, plain and simple, a vote to re-elect George W. Bush. I hope that Ralph Nader will withdraw his candidacy in the best interests of the country we hope to become.
Many of my supporters urged me to run as an independent, but I judged it the wrong thing to do. There is still time for Ralph Nader to stand with those in the Democratic Party who are building a progressive coalition to defeat George W. Bush. But time is running out. We can win only if we are united. Finally, something on which Dean and I wholeheartedly agree.
: UPDATE: Joe Lieberman also tells Nader what for.
Read all about it
: There's a transcript of the ETech panel on which I served up here. I shudder to think what it's like to read what I say talking. I talk fast. There are probably nospacebars.
Iran sham
: Great Michael Ledeen column on the true numbers in the Iranian "election." We got way way better coverage out of Iranian bloggers/citizen reporters via Iranfilter.com than through most big media.
(And we got that thanks to the translation of Hoder, Pedram, and other Iranian bloggers.)
: UPDATE: And Pedram says it even better. What does it matter how many people show up to a sham election? In short, even if 80% take part in the next fake election, it won't prove anything. It will not be a sign of approval for the regime or the process in any way or shape. What is clear, is that the majority of Iranians do not approve of this regime. If they did, there would be no reason for the establishment to deny the demand of its various inside and outside opposition to hold a binding and monitored referendum and either silence all the critics once and for all, or accept their policies of the past 25 ears have been a major disaster and accept the consequences. Only if that vote is internationally supervised and accepted binding by all sides will we be able and justified to argue about what the numbers actually mean or how it'll effect the future of Iran.
Later
: Have crappy connectivity. Back in a bit.
Another wet kiss
: Lee Gomes gives blogs a belated Valentine in today's Wall Street Journal. These blogs are becoming an alternative-news universe, giving everyone with a PC and a Web connection access to the sorts of gossip that was once available only to reporters on the press bus. At a site like Feedster, which is to blogs what Google is to Web sites, you can track the rumor du jour. And what Napster did for MP3s, blogs are doing for news -- or, at least for rumors. They are eliminating the gatekeepers and all barriers to entry....
I am, in my private life, a voracious reader of these things, as are most of my friends, reporters included.
The Stern vote
: Howard Stern spent the last few years singing George Bush's praises but Bush has lost him and here's the killer blow: Over vacation, Howard bought Al Franken's book and loved it. "If you read this book, you'll never vote for George Bush," he said.
Before you go off on a Frankenfest, that's not the point. Bush lost Stern in part because of what he confesses is a self-serving issue: threats of censorship from the FCC. But it's more than that; Stern said it's also about forbidding stem-cell research and trying to forbid abortion. Stern said Bush is a religious fanatic, "a Jesus freak." And, Stern said lately, it's about the economy; it's about jobs.
Stern didn't say much about Kerry; he didn't mention Edwards. But he said he has become an anybody-but-Bush voter.
This matters.
Howard's back
: This is what a sick fan I am: I'm on vacation and could actually sleep this morning, yet I set the alarm for 6 so I could hear Howard Stern on Stuttering John's defection to the Jay Leno show.
Stern won't stand in the way of his guy, John, getting a good gig with more money (reportedly $500k/year for three years). That's not the interesting part.
Howard said Leno called him twice and Howard called Jay lame for stealing not only his bits but now his people. Leno sends people out to the red carpet to ask odd questions, as Stuttering John does (and, in fact, Leno tried to hire John before to do this). Leno stole the Stern homeless game/stripper game. Now Leno steals Stuttering John. And as a I said a few days ago, it's all the odder that Leno is hiring him as announcer, extending Stern's stuttering joke.
Leno called Stern a second time asking him to come on Tonight to talk about it. Stern laughed at him.
And that's the morning Stern report.
February 22, 2004
More Ralphing
: Rep. Mark Cohen leaves this note in the comments on the Nader post below: Ralph Nader has every right to declare his candidacy. Voters have every right not to sign his nomination petition, not to contribute to his campaign, not to listen to his speeches, not to vote for him. He has done, and led others to do, great things. But helping George win is not one of them. Nor will helping Bush win a second term be one of them. Right. Don't give me any freedom-of-speech crap about telling Ralph that he shouldn't be running -- and he should take responsibilty for the consequences of running. We're just as free to complain as he is to campaign. That is free speech.
The power of the individual and the web
: On Meet the Press, Ralph Nader is being forced to watch the wonderful Flash appeal on RalphDontRun.net. So a few people who created this are being heard on national TV and are confronting the very man they want to confront. Now that's power.
And, of course, Ralph is deaf to it: "That's the liberal intelligensia... That's a contemptuous statement." He argues that anyone is trying to stop him from running.
No one is trying to stop you. Many are trying to get you to stop yourself, to be responsible, to recognize that you've become a destructive self-parody of political ego.
Ralph, you old loon.
: Here's Nader's campaign site. Let's start a GoogleBomb. Here is the election spoiler.
: No blog. No forum. No chance to hear the voters speak on Ralph's site. He doesn't care to listen. That's obvoius.
: NZ Bear just sent me email; noticed the same thing.
Ralph is deaf.
: Nader calls for the impeachment of Bush. "If there's any better definition for high crimes and misdemeanors than misleading" regarding the cause to go to war he doesn't know it, Nader tells Tim Russert.
: "We can't just sit down like The Nation magazine," says Nader. Russet read Nader The Nation's editorial begging Nader not to do what he is doing this morning. Bitchslap.
: "Spoiler is a contemptuous term," says Nader. Yes, Ralph, it is.
Nader, the dork, does it
: Ralph Nader proves that he's nothing but ego, officially announces. The story from Meet the Press just went up.
Girl talk
: Couldn't believe my eyes just now: Tina Brown on a Sunday morning talk show (Today). Tina Brown sharing a couch with others (someone from US, someone from New York mag). Tina Brown talking about the characters on Sex and the City as if they were celebrities. Is this a case of how the mighty do drop? Or is this the real Tina engaging in girl talk?
Going to the source
: Glenn Reynolds shows us two quotes in The New York Times two weeks apart from one George Meagher, but the quotes are different and the description of the person is different (independent, then Republican) and one wonders why the same reporter working on the same story (declining support for Bush) couldn't at least find new sources and new quotes.
So I decided to go to the source. I dug up an email for the museum where Mr. Meagher is curator and sent him an email asking what his experience with The Times reporter was. We'll what he has to say, if he chooses to reply.
I've decided that going to the source is a good thing for bloggers to do. Yesterday, I emailed the Columbia prof who caused much discussion in blogs to offer to continue the discussion over coffee or email.
And now in Persian
: I put out a message to Iranian bloggers on behalf of novelist Claire Berlinkski, below. Now Ali has been kind enough to translate the post into Persian. It is an image, so any Iranian bloggers who want to just pick up the image and run it on their blogs, please feel free to do so. Thanks, Ali!
February 21, 2004
Drop drawers
: Matthew Yglesias wonders whether county officials will soon have to inspect crotches before issuing marriage licenses.
A challenge to Howard Dean...
: If you are truly a Democrat, Dr. Dean, and if you meant what you said about supporting the nominee of the party, then you should come out immediately and ask your supports not to support Ralph Nader.
A challenge to Al Gore...
: Likewise. You, of all people, Al, should take up this challenge.
Or on second thought, the best way to defeat Nader might be for you to endorse him, Al.
Security
: Iraqi blogger Alaa -- who says work may soon take him abroad, where he'll continue to blog -- has strong suggestions on the security situation in his nation. You know, I don’t think any country has ever faced such a massive terrorist campaign. Almost daily a major suicide bombing; not to mentions scores of incidents.... Is it not time to admit that we are facing an emergency situation and that emergency measures are required? Imagine this happening in the U.S. or any other country for that matter.... I am still firmly convinced that there is no alternative to the painstaking security approach. Terrorism cannot be completely stopped but it can sure be reduced and made too risky and dangerous for the perpetrators.
What, you mean that crystal ball isn't crystal?
: Flimflamstar John Edward may be brought up on charges in Australia because -- gasp -- there's doubt that he can actually talk to the dead. Consumer Affairs Victoria is examining a complaint alleging celebrity self-proclaimed psychic John Edward cannot talk to the dead.
Melbourne mind illusionist Mark Mayer claims the star of worldwide TV hit Crossing Over with John Edward "is a specialist at fooling people".
Mayer made a formal complaint to Consumer Affairs on Friday, claiming Edward's sell-out show in Melbourne would breach the Trade Practices Act....
He said Edward's key technique was "cold reading".
"He asks questions in rapid succession, then when he gets an answer he feeds it back as if he already knew the information," Mayer said.
He alleged Edward then used probability, suggesting common names or ailments that were likely to strike a chord with the person in the audience, he said.
Mayer said if Edward were genuine he would be able to hear full names, not only the first letter.
"Why can't the dead articulate? Why are they mumbling?" he said.
Chief Wiggles is home!
: After one helluva year, Chief Wiggles is back home from Iraq.
He changed the world, our Chief. He created a wonderful way for Americans to give a little joy to Iraqi children with gifts of toys. He shared his experiences with the world on his blog and brought it all to a human scale with a human heart. He got attention for his good word in the press and on TV and told his story to an even wider audience.
I know we all are delighted he back and safe and offer our congratulations for a job spectacularly done.
I know we all also want to offer him our prayers as he helps care for his father, who is ill.
Go read the story of his return.
Godspeed, Chief.
Full circle
: Chris Pirillo alerts me to a blog devoted to commenting on my mag child, Entertainment Weekly. Well-done.
Support for Iraqi bloggers
: Tom Villars has successfully transferred the first tip-jar contributions to an Iraqi blogger. That is big news. It took incredible fortitude from Tom to figure this out. He is willing and eager to help other Iraqi bloggers. I urge all my friends there to sign up; there are plenty of readers around the world who are eager to help your good work. Details here.
The 16th minute
: After Rex Hammock blogged his visit to the White House, he got tons of media and blog attention and the flowers and flak that come with it. Now he reports on his reaction. Go read his latest posts. He continues to invite us all into his experience and it's a kick to be there. This was Rex' goal and he succeeded at it masterfully: "I did feel like (and while some of you will get this, non-bloggers will think it ridiculous) I had an obligation to other bloggers to record as much of my personal point-of-view of the experience as I could. I know we all disagree on where we stand on the issues and how we perceive President Bush, but I felt even his detractors would appreciate a blogger-version of the experience."
If it's not linked, does it exist?
: Terry Teachout has a good piece on the necessary ethics of linking. But he first makes an important point about the future of media and the necessity of links: We depend on our blog friends to find the good stuff for us and if they don't, we aren't likely to read it.
BloggerCon, the sequel
: Dave Winer tells us in the comments below (to the post about conference panels) that the next BloggerCon will be on April 10. I'll be there. And maybe I'll finally have a meal with Joi Ito!
Microsoft wish list
: Dave Winer spoke at Microsoft a week ago and he was asked what he wants the IE group to do. From Joshua Allen's notes: A: Two main things: 1) Make it easy to subscribe to a feed with a single click, regardless of users choice of aggregator. Needs browser support, cooperation of aggegator vendors. 2) Also make it easier to create posts from within browser, regardless of choice of blog server. Anen to that.
Introductions to Iranian bloggers...
: I have a few introductions to make to Iranian bloggers (the world is fascinated by what you're doing and wants to meet you).
: First, meet Stuart Hughes, a BBC journalist and a nice guy, is in Tehran covering the "elections." I've urged him to do the story of the Iranian blog community; he wants to if he has time before his visa runs out.
If you're interested in meeting Stuart, please email me and I will pass it onto Stuart.
I've also made an email introduction between Stuart and Hoder. Hoder linked to Stuart; Stuart saw that and tried to read Hoder's blog but it was being blocked in Iran. (That's why I'm posting all this here, since I know some of you read this blog.)
: Second, meet Claire Berlinski. Claire is the first person I know who wrote a novel and put it online, where it was discovered by a big publisher and now her book is in bookstores.
Claire is working on a new novel called Lion Eyes about a mysterious Persian blogger who may be real or may be a plant -- that's the mystery. Claire is also very interested in Iran. She wrote to me in email: The novel will, I hope, illustrate some of the ways that the Internet and weblogging are changing Iranian political culture. I want to make this book as realistic as possible, and to that end, was hoping to consult with Persian bloggers about some of the problems and constraints they face. To give the character maximum versimillitude, I'm hoping to ask them about some of the textural details of their lives. I'd like to be in regular contact with Iranians who can answer questions like these: What can you see from your window? What are they selling in the markets near your home? What do you eat for breakfast? What newspapers do you read? How much do you pay for a quart of milk? What do you do for fun on the weekends? What Internet sites do you visit? How does your family feel about your blog? How has blogging changed your life? The point of this would be to garner realistic details for the novel and to create a convincing character who thinks and behaves like a young, Western-educated Iranian blogger....
I think in the end it will -- at least I hope it will -- raise interest among non-Iranians about these issues. If you would like to help Claire -- from Iran or from safer climes as expats -- please email her at lioneyesproject@hotmail.com or you can email me and I'll pass it on.
: If a kind Persian speaker would be good enough to translate all this into Persian, I'll put it up on the blog here.
Video from Tehran
: Stuart Hughes of the BBC got into Tehran to cover the election. He filed a video report for us on his blog. (Which only makes me wish that more bloggers from Iran and Iraq and elsewhere in the world could and would put up video on their blogs).
: UPDATE: Lady Sun was interviewed for the AP story on Iranian blogs and here's her reaction.
: And here's a new English-language Iranian blog from a friend of Lady Sun's.
Beyond the panel discussion
: I sat on a panel yesterday with the best possible panelists -- people of stature with experience and plenty to contribute; the best possible moderator -- who knew how to keep the discussion going; and the best possible audience -- with interested people who asked good questions.
But it struck me that we need to move beyond the form of the panel discussion -- because we can.
When I ran a panel at BloggerCon, Dave Winer got me break the form by insisting it wasn't a panel; everyone in the room had plenty to contribute and was part of the discussion; there was no panel or everyone was on the panel.
At ETech and Bloggercon, I've watched the back-channel discussion on IRC (particularly Joi Ito's channel) with fascination.
With just a little added software, I think someone could blow up and reinvent the panel discussion:
1. Give the entire audience a back channel (and, of course, wi-fi). Give them a chat channel and wiki so they can share comments and resources.
2. Display that back-channel to all, including the panel (and don't be bothered by a little good-natured heckling).
3. Allow the audience to post questions from the first moment and allow the audience to prioritize those questions. (A wiki could do that.)
4. Put on the panel an advocate of the back-channel who acts as another moderator and brings up the good questions and arguments and refererences from the audience, including those not in the room.
5. Whenever possible, webcast the panel and the back-channel to get more expert input from the world.
6. Create a simple ap that allows the audience to vote on topics of interest for the panel: discuss this first, then that, then that.
7. That ap should also allow the audience to vote on whether they want more or less on a topic: keep talking about this or move on, please (or, yes, every panelist should answer the same question or, no, don't bother).
8. If the panel has guts, it could allow the audience to vote on favorite panelists (from whom do we want to hear more?).
9. With or without technology, as soon as possible, open the discussion to all.
Somebody clever could take open-source functionality and package it for conference givers. I'll take a cut.
Sharing knowledge
: I happened upon a PBS discussion show called Uncommon Knowledge that's tackling the issues of the lack of democracy in the Arab world. The host just quoted an amazing stat from the U.N.: "Fewer books have been tranlsated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years than are translated into Spanish in a year." I wish we were teaching our children Arabic.
: The show and the discussion were great. Unfortunately, I can't find a transcript or video of the show past the 2003 season. Drat.
: Note again Juan Cole's very worthy project to translate great works of western democracy into Arabic. Go contribute here.
Old vs. news: I
: Yesterday, by fate -- or kismet -- I attended two panel discussions at NYU that tried to see what's next for media from two perspectives: the past and the future.
As I mentioned below, I was on a panel for MBA students from across the country called "Beyond the Printed Page." Some heavyweights -- Kelly Conlin, president of Primedia; Bruce Hallett, president of Sports Ilustrated, Paul Rossi, publisher of Ecnomist.com; Thomas Carley, president of NYTimes News Services -- shared their valuable experience with extending their products, brands, and revenue in the internet, TV, and such.
At the end, Eric Garland, the moderator, asked the obligatory question about the fate of print. We'd all been joking that the students -- faced with a choice of sexier panels about music, TV, and children's entertainment -- wouldn't show up for dusty old print (many did). So Garland cued the whither-print discussion. Hallett said that these are not mature businesses and are still developing and growing; the rest nodded.
I'd said earlier that we are in for a fundamental restructuring -- with an endless supply of content that could be viewed as competition or, better, as a new source of diverse viewpoints and deeper relationships; I did my citizens'-media boogie (you've watched that dance before so I'll spare you).
And as I left, I got email from Jay Rosen saying that he and Anil Dash would be speaking to a group at the NYU Law School on how weblogs are changing the world (I blogged it, below). Jay talked eloquently, as always, on the fundamental restructuring of content. There was a lot of excitement about the Iranian and Iraqi bloggers. The place buzzed.
When I got home, I told my wife about it over dinner and said it was a rather stark contrast: old v. new, big v. small, drone v. buzz. She nodded but also chuckled and said it's too bad there's no money in this blog thing. She's right (she always is).
And so now it hits me that the big boys aren't going to take this phenomenon seriously until they see its economic power. They'll think it's cute that citizens' media powered Howard Dean or will power revolution in Iran. But what they care about is money.
They will notice when a Denton steals an advertiser from them or shows up in market research as a better competitor or sells his company to one of them for a few mil.
It's about money. If we want this new medium to be taken seriously and if we want it to get the resources it needs to develop with more tools and talent, then we do need to get serious about money (which means, among many other things, creating standards for measuring the size of the medium).
I don't want to see the buzz of the second panel turn into the drone of the first (that will come in a generation or two). I just want to see the buzz grow.
Old v. news: II
: A few days ago, I posted excerpts from and arguments against Eli Noam's Financial Times article arguing that we are in the midst of a market failure in the information and entertainment ecomies. The comments here had some great refutations from wiser economic minds than mine. Om Malik, Ross Mayfield, Kevin Werbach, Steve MacLaughlin, Jennifer Rice, and others joined in.
(What I like about all this is that I knew Noam's piece was bull but I don't have the econ-class chops sufficient to argue -- but my fellow bloggers do. You make my arguments for me. You fight my fights for me.)
Now Fred Wilson, who really has the econ chops to argue -- having helped build this economy -- adds another citation to the argument: I don't know what world Eli is living in, but its not in the trenches. There is opportunity every where I look in the information economy right now. Maybe I should go up to Columbia and offer Eli a tour of it.
What is happening, as so brilliantly described by another economist, Carlota Perez, in her book "Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital" is that we are at the end of the "installation" period where building infrastructure was the recipe for making money and at the start of the "golden age of IT" where using it in innovative ways will be the key to making money.
Apple isn't making a lot of money on iMacs anymore, but they are making a ton of money right now selling iPods and Airport Extremes. Soon, those cash cows will pave the way for new Apple businesses built around Garage Band and iTunes. As Jeff Jarvis said in his post, "There's somebody using Apple's Garageband in a garage right now creating a future hit that will surely be sold at Apple's iTunes store."
Eli should come down from his ivory tower and hit the streets and see what crafty entrepreneurs are doing with commoditized infrastructure. They are building the "golden age" of IT before our very eyes. I like the idea of taking Noam on a tour; I'm emailing him.
: Om puts together excerpts of many of the bloggers' comments linked above.
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