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March 16, 2004

Gaining something in translation
: Spiegel is now going to translate articles of international interest into English. That's the power of the international Internet: A German magazine wants an audience over here. [via David's Medienkritik, which will no longer be the only source for English translations of Spiegel... which could just be why they did it]

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Spin the numbers
: Yesterday, I noted that the BBC -- even the BBC -- found and lead with positive notes from a poll it took in Iraq: "The poll suggests that Iraqis are happier than they were before the invasion, optimistic about the future and opposed to violence."
The New York Times reported on the same poll this way: "Ambivalence From Iraqis in Poll on War."
Spin.

: Wednesday, The Times reports more polling from its glass-half-empty perspective.

In some predominantly Muslim countries, where negative attitudes toward American policy have prevailed for years, disapproval of the United States persisted over the past year, although at a less intense level that Mr. Kohut described as anger rather than hatred.
Still, the survey found, people in Jordan, Pakistan and Morocco tended to view other outsiders with almost the same degree of ill will and distrust as they did the United States.

Well, gee, couldn't one also say that this year of all years, following the war in Iraq, isn't it amazing that Muslim countries' attitudes toward America improved?

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Worth it
: Norm watches Salam Pax talk to people in Iraq about the war, a year later, and he concludes:

It is not going to be easy, but it was totally worth it.

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Free Martha
: Elizabeth Spiers has the letter Martha Stewart sent to friends soliciting notes testifying to her character before her sentencing:

Many people have inquired as to whether they can help by writing to Judge Cedarbaum about my sentence. I am advised by my lawyers that it is appropriate to do so, and that they believe Judge Cedarbaum will conscientiously read everything sent to her. If you would be so kind as to write such a letter, please include your opinion of my character, my work ethic, my integrity and my probity.

And damned fine creampuffs.
Seriously, though, the woman has been punished enough. Sentence her to fine and community service and let's be done with it.

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Coming home to roost
: French President Jacques Chirac, meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, says that "all democracies are in danger of possible terrorist attack."
Welcome to the real world, Jacques. [via the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, auf Deutsch]

: London's police chief says a terrorist attack on the city is "inevitable."

Sir John agreed with Mr Livingstone, who said: "It would be miraculous if, with all the terrorist resources arranged against us, terrorists did not get through, and given that some are prepared to give their own lives, it would be inconceivable that someone does not get through to London." ...
"This is not just about the railways, the underground," he said. "It's about buses, roads, pubs, nightclubs and the like. Remember al-Qaida attacked a nightclub in Bali."

: Meanwhile, in Germany, liberals are pushing to create a National Guard to protect against terrorist attacks. [via Bild, auf Deutsch]

: At the same time, Bild lists the most dangerous Muslims in Germany. Keep in mind that some Germans have been less than fond of Turks and other outsiders.
After Madrid, beware of ethnic attacks on Muslims (and not just Jews now) and not just in Germany.

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Star blogger: Mark Cuban
: Jason Calacanis adds blogs the way a bunny adds generations and so I wander over frequently see what's new and what's new now: A Mark Cuban blog. So far, he's writing about his Mavericks and his TV show; I hope he also writes about HDTV and what it's like to be so friggin' rich.
Next: The Trump Gates Blog.

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Wake up and smell the spin
: A member of the team that wrote the much-linked study on the shrinking news biz (see below), Dante Chinni, writes a lament in the Christian Science Monitor that misses the point by a mile:

So it is in 21st century America, where choice reigns even when it comes to what sort of news you are looking for. Don't like what you're hearing about the world on CNN? Try Fox. Is The Washington Post too conservative? Tune in Air America.
Of course, on its face, there is nothing wrong with any of this - though Fox's "fair and balanced" masquerading is at best good for a few laughs and at worst painfully dishonest. Opinion journalism has long been considered an important part of presenting a full picture of the news....
But we're seeing something different today. Traditional old-line outlets are being abandoned....
Where are people turning? To smaller outlets that allow for more customizable news, and often to sources that validate viewpoints more than illuminate the larger world.
Opinion journalism is becoming less a way to round out the average American's news meal and more its main course. We've been living in the world of instant spin for some time, but we're now entering the world where the line between news and spin is vanishing. And of all the disquieting trends in journalism, this may be the most troubling because it touches on this country's ability to make decisions as a people.
Everyone has opinions, but for those opinions to be worth something, they have to be based on facts so that we can come up with an accepted version of reality. That's how democracy works. Some of the media are entering an age where facts are based upon opinion. And reality? Well, that all depends on whom you get your news from.

He's fighting his audience -- his customers, his public, his people -- instead of listening to them.
There are reasons they're doing this. Could be that they're bored by news. Could be that they don't find news, as he defines it, useful to their daily life. Could be that they like hearing transparent spin (rather than attempts to hide it). Could be that they believe news and spin have always been inseperable. Could be.

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The father of WYSIWYG
: I was there the day John Seybold coined WYSIWYG.
I was at an early publishing-industry seminar in California run by Seybold and he kept hearing us say we didn't want to have to enter all kinds of codes and not know what became of them until type spat out of a big photocompositor (now there's a word you don't hear every decade). We wanted to see it on our screens.
The gentle and brilliant Mr. Seybold got up and said that what he heard everybody demanding was "what you see is what you get." He looked skyward as he calculated the acronym. W-Y-S-I-W-Y-G. He smiled an impish smile. And then he carefully prounounced it: "whiz-zee-wig."
And more than jargon was born. A way of creating and looking at content was given birth. I say this led to new ways to publish content in print and that led to computerized mark-up codes and it led to Quark and it led to the idea that anybody could create content and it led to HTML and it led to the browser and it led to the weblog, with a few detours and scenic stops inbetween.
WYSIWYG changed the world in its own way. And John Seybold said it first.
John Seybold died this week at 88. He is survived by some brilliant children and an industry and a new way of looking at the world.

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Shark, jumped
: Didya notice that few seemed to notice the Bloggies this year?

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Truth
: Terry Teachout fact-checks Tim Robbins' ass.

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Jersey blog MeetUp!
: Come one, come all. NJ.com is playing host (well, you'll get a coffee) for a Jersey blog MeetUp. Details here. I'll be there (but don't let that discourage you). I understand a certain local NY Times writer will be there. I'm sure hearty souls will abandon to the nearest bar for green beer afterwards.
Come even and especially if you are not a blogger but you're curious. The point of this is to spread the blogging gospel and get more people blogging locally. The more the merrier!
And leave a comment here if you can come.

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Organized
: I'm disorganized. So I like things that organize me. Yesterday, I started testing OnFolio to save web pages and more (so far so good). Today, Steve Outing sents us to another tool, NetSnippets. Damn. Now I need an organizational tool for my organizational tools.

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A nation of Neville Chamberlains

: David Brooks tiptoes up to the line -- "I am trying not to think harshly of the Spanish" -- but then he speaks the harsh truth about the Spanish election:

What is the Spanish word for appeasement
There are millions of Americans, in and out of government, who believe the swing Spanish voters are shamefully trying to seek a separate peace in the war on terror.
I'm resisting that conclusion, because I don't know what mix of issues swung the Spanish election during those final days. But I do know that reversing course in the wake of a terrorist attack is inexcusable. I don't care what the policy is. You do not give terrorists the chance to think that their methods work. You do not give them the chance to celebrate victories. When you do that, you make the world a more dangerous place, for others and probably for yourself.
We can be pretty sure now that this will not be the last of the election-eve massacres. Al Qaeda will regard Spain as a splendid triumph. After all, how often have murderers altered a democratic election? And having done it once, why stop now? Why should they not now massacre Italians, Poles, Americans and Brits?
Al Qaeda has now induced one nation to abandon the Iraqi people.

Well said. This echoes what I said in response to Steven Johnson, below.

Every citizen of every civilized country in the world has an obligation to every other citizen to fight united against terrorists.

Brooks goes onto affirm that the same thing would not happen in an election here:

Does anyone doubt that Americans and Europeans have different moral and political cultures? Yesterday the chief of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, told Italy's La Stampa, "It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists." Does he really think capitulation or negotiation works better? Can you imagine John Kerry or George Bush saying that?
Nor is America itself without blame. Where was our State Department? Why hasn't Colin Powell spent the past few years crisscrossing Europe so that voters there would at least know the arguments for the liberation of Iraq, would at least have some accurate picture of Americans, rather than the crude cowboy stereotype propagated by the European media? Why does the Bush administration make it so hard for its friends? Why is it so unable to reach out?
This is a watershed event. It will change how Al Qaeda thinks about the world. It will change how Europeans see the world. It will constrain American policy for years to come.

And like it or not, al Qaeda has crowned us the leaders of the civilized world.

: Or look at it another way: We're headed into an era of worldwide isolationism.

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Cheap beer, expensive bottles

: Glenn Reynolds looks at all the whither-the-news-business talk yesterday, inspired by the latest study on the topic, and concludes:

Back during the 1970s, a lot of big American beer makers -- Schlitz is the most famous example -- cut their quality to save money. They did so in tiny steps, each imperceptible on its own, but the eventual result was that a lot of people suddenly woke up and said "this beer's no good anymore." (What made things worse for them was that they were cutting quality just as consumers started caring more about it.) Beer drinkers went off in search of other brews, and some of those brands disappeared from the shelves.
It seems to me that the news business has the same problem. They've been cutting reporting budgets and foreign bureaus, relying more on news services and "filler" material, and tolerating a much higher degree of bias and general sloppiness in reporting, just as their audience has learned to tell the difference between good and bad journalism. The result is that a lot of people think their beer's no good any more.
I remember when Schlitz tried to address this problem with a new Master Brewer and the slogan "taste my Schlitz." It didn't work for them. Now, a generation later, they're trying to make a comeback with a better product, and the hope that consumers have forgotten the watery and unsatisfying taste of the old one. Will the news business have to wait as long? And can it?

: But Glenn, I bet you couldn't find a newspaper editor or TV news director in the country who would not join in your chorus of complaint about lowered news budgets.

The problem is revenue. The Internet has created tons of new competition not just for news but, more importantly, also for revenue: Monster, Craig's List, companies' own sites. At the same time, Walmart -- and Amazon -- have had a big impact on local retail and thus local advertising. So, looking at this from the business perspective -- and, yes, this is a business or it's dead -- the answer, clearly, is not to keep throwing more money (you don't have) into news budgets.

Instead, what I see through the lense of this new medium is the need to redefine the news business.

First, we have to admit that most news is a commodity and, thus, it's not worth wasting money on what everybody else has anyway. That's especially easy to fix in the TV news business: Everybody doesn't need a camera at the press conference; they can share the image. Everybody doesn't need to cover the same events; you can get it off the wire. News organizations need to be able to concentrate instead of what makes them uniquely valuable to their audiences. And that's not necessarily what wins awards; sometimes it's simply the best citizen service.

Second, we have to admit that many people get their news elsewhere (on the Internet, on TV, even from comedy shows now) and some people dont' give a damn about the news and you can't make them give a damn no matter how hard you try. So that means we need to look at what the best news products are for our audiences -- and sometimes, they won't include news. You may get home from the office fully informed about the world thanks to stealing time from the boss and reading the Internet and so what you really want is a kickass sports show or a great entertainment paper. That's news, too, if it tells you want you want to know.

Third, we have to look at new sources of news and information -- emphasis on information. That is where citizens' media comes in. The people have tons of information; they are the real source. Now we have the tools to harnass that. (Insert spiel about the people now having a printing press thanks to weblogs et al here.) So we need to investigate and build a new relationship with the people formerly known as the audience and find ways to help them share information; that is a new and important role for news organizations if they can figure it out.

Fourth, we need to recognize that though reporting usually requires special resources and sometimes requires special skills, commentary and opinion require neither and anybody can -- and should -- do it. Thus, thanks to those same everybody-has-the-power-of-the-printing-press tools, we can open the news business up a tremendous new diversity of opinion and viewpoint from the citizens.

So we create a new relationship with the audience with new kinds of service and new expectations... and, necessarily, lower costs. That's what I hope this new medium not only necessitates but enables.

: See also this Rob Enderle column on the Mediamorphisis confab last week. He ends up concluding that a merger of news organizations and bloggers can create a generation of superbloggers. If I understand what he's saying, I think I disagree. The power of bloggers is that we are distributed; we are; we don't need to be super.

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The Daily Stern

: SANITIZED FOR YOUR PROTECTION: Stern said this morning that his company is threatening to make him stop taking phone calls and even make him prerecord the show a day before, just so it can be sterilized and homogenized. He even mentioned them threatening to move him to another daypart.
Many people have speculated that Infinity won't let Stern go.
But I'll just bet he has a creative-control clause in his contract and that will be his out.
And if he is suddenly liable for up to $500,000 per day personally, you can bet that a smart lawyer can get him out of any contract that puts him in a position of such liability.
I'm not selling my Sirius stock.

: QUIET BEFORE THE STORM: Things are quiet on the Stern front today. But expect them to heat up again later this week when the Senate passes its indecent indecency bill.

: WELCHERS: Howard said Clear Channel is trying to stiff him for the money they owe him on his contract. He'll fight in court. He'll win.

: SATELLITE DOC: Says Doc:

I want so see Howard on Sirius for two reasons: Tom Reilly and NPR, both of whom/which are on Sirius and not on the larger XM.
Me, I'd just love to see Howard start webcasting, finding the best way to stay inside the rules imposed by the Library of Congress rather than by the FCC, and leading the way to vitalizing an industry that was strangled in its cradle and left for dead by the LOC and its Copyright Office, acting as puppets for the RIAA. I guarantee you'd see webcasts to cars, somehow, within three years.

: REPUBLICANS ARE PAYING ATTENTION: Even the GOP USA site is covering what Stern says. Because it matters.

: THE VOICE OF YOUTH: YM surveyed readers and two thirds side with Stern and free speech.

: PREVIOUS STERN POSTS: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.

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