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May 19, 2004

Ronald McDonald gay?

: I want to get the McDonald's Go Active! Happy Meal for adults and I came out feeling so, well, so damned metrosexual.

Do they have to put it in a frigging purse? A big purse? A big purse with Oprah advice on it: "Shopping is now an official sport!"

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A Kerrey by any other name...

: Joe Territo wonders whether the frequently shameful performance of Bob Kerrey and the 9/11 Commission will cost John Kerry votes.

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Arianna Huffington Day!

: Did the mayor declare Monday Arianna Huffington Day in New York?

I'm going to cross paths with her three times on Monday:

We're both going to be on Micah Sifry's panel at the Personal Democracy Forum.

Then she's going to be at a panel I can't wait to hear put on by The Week Magazine at Grand Central: Huffington, Bill Maher (who hasn't blogged in months), FoxNews' John Gibson (a long, long-ago pal from SanFran), and Michelle Malkin discuss with moderator Harry Evans, "Censorship or common decency? The backlash against media excess." I'm planning on blogging it live, assuming I can fit my laptop next to the shrimp salad.

And then that night she's going to be at the next Citizens' Table dinner.

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Can you hear me?

: I'm starting to see/hear more good audio work from audio amateurs on the web.

Jay Rosen's independent study student, Linda Blake, has an audio blog with stories about and from people affected by AIDS. I listened to some of it (downloaded on my iPod) and it's very good.

It's very much in the style of Ira Glass on NPR's This American Life: Let people narrate their own stories but make sure it is told as a story (not a ramble).

Transom.org -- which features Glass right now -- does a good job of telling you and me how we can create such online radio ourselves. And it has some of the radio that has resulted; I listened to a report about a German rider lawnmower race, also good.

Now that I have my iPod, I was hoping to hear more Chris Lydon interviews but, unfortunately, his work is now streamed instead of downloadable. Which leads me to a minor rant:

Why can't we download all of NPR?

: I don't understand why NPR streams most of its programs or sells others via Audible (about whose product and customer service I've had a few minor rants as well).

Of course, I understand why record companies don't want songs downloaded; they want to sell records. I understand why, say, Stern doesn't want his shows streamed or downloaded; he doesn't want to undercut his syndication.

But isn't NPR's mission to reach the largest possible audience? Why not make all shows downloadable? It's not as if that would undercut advertising revenue; they have none. It's not as if they're making a fortune from Audible; I can't imagine they are (or they'd be offering more shows there).

In fact, I'd bet that if NPR made all its shows available for download as MP3s -- freely shared -- it would increase not only its audience but also its donations: More grateful listeners means more bucks, no? And by making shows available for download instead of streaming and allowing them to be shared (or BitTorrented), NPR would save a fortune on bandwidth. Can't lose.

So open the gates, NPR, and let us listen: MP3 it!

: UPDATE: I had mislinked to Linda Blake's site. It's here.

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Has it been 15 minutes?

It's an avalanche of Nick Denton publicity.

Wired (on sale but not yet online) has a well-written story by Newsweeks' Steven Levy with a nice photo of Nick and Choire and Ana Marie. Cute snarks about Nick's big head (literal, not figurative). If you already know the Denton saga, there's nothing new here but then that's why God invented magazines, to fill in those who don't know it yet.

And then Business 2.0 has an odd nonprofile profile by Greg Lindsay. It sets out to be the story about not getting the story -- because Nick, at first, refused to be interviewed -- but then Nick does answer questions and so it's no longer the story about not getting the story. And then it's skeptical about Nick's skepticism about how rich blogs can become and I'm not sure how to read that double negative: Is Business 2.0 skeptical about blogs or is it blowing up the blog bubble or is it just that it can't decide?

And then Nick responds with an added dose of skepticism. It becomes a triple negative.

Arrrgh. It's not that big a business story. Nick, as Nick will be the first to insist, is not yet that big a business story. It's early; blogs as a lifeform are just getting around to crawl out of the ocean and breath. They will be a business but not yet.

By the way, I spoke with both writers about Nick but, thankfully, I wasn't quoted saying anything that will later come back to haunt me (I reserve that for this space).

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The Daily Stern

: STERN VOTERS: Pollster Zogby says Howard Stern could have an impact on the election:

"Look at Howard Stern's audience: 18-to-34 year-old men," says John Zogby, head of Zogby International, a nonpartisan polling firm in Utica, N.Y. "This would be a group — Nascar, ESPN, sports, baseball caps on backwards, conservative, heterosexual, and so on — that ordinarily votes Republican. This could be hugely significant if these young men vote in greater numbers for Kerry."

Sort through the postings on Stern's Web site, and it becomes clear why his listeners could conceivably play a role in electing the next president. Young people, generally an apathetic lot when it comes to casting ballots, are being urged to register. And right-of-center Stern fans, typically Bush backers, are uncharacteristically vowing to pick Kerry over partisan loyalty.

"I live in Whitehall, Pa.," wrote one listener. "I'm a 34-year-old white-collar worker and never registered to vote. Because of you, I registered." Wrote another: "I'm a 25-year-old female from Chicago, and I just love you so much! I've never registered to vote until recently, and I will vote for Kerry." A third correspondent echoed the sentiment: "I have been a fan for a very long time, but I am now starting to listen to the show more carefully. Howard is saying things about our government that EVERY voter in America needs to hear about.... I can't wait for November to vote Bush and his regime out!" This isn't the message the Grand Ol' Party wants to hear.

Of course, not everyone is sold on Stern's ability to sway a national election.

"Can Stern have an effect? Sure," says Maurice Carroll, head of the nonpartisan Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Hamden, Conn. "A big effect? No. I can't see it being big." Carroll is skeptical of any celebrity influencing national voting significantly. But he concedes that Stern's impact could be magnified if the race turns out to be as tight as his and other polls are indicating.

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The hearings
: God bless Mayor Giuliani. He told the 9/11 Commission today what they other too many others need to hear and have too often forgotten:

Our enemy is not each other, but the terrorists who attacked us....
The blame should be put on one source alone, the terrorists who killed our loved ones.

: I listened to part of the hearings in the car on the way back from a meeting and I ended up shouting at the shouters, the people who interrupted Giuliani yelling about radios and such. I don't know who they were; I hope they weren't family members. Whoever was shouting, if they think they are somehow paying tribute to or protecting the memory of the brave firefighters and police who died in the towers with their heckling, they are wrong. It is unfortunate that they fit in all too easily with the m.o. of these hearings.

This should not be about finding blame. This should be about finding improvements.

: The commission's idiocy returns today. Timothy Roemer played a prosecutor on TV as he repeatedly asked one witness whether a given problem was solved or not. The witnessed tried to answer but Roemer would not let him. He would accept only one-word answers: solved or not? If Roemer and this commission have not yet learned that this is not about simplistic one-word, one-dimension answers, then they might as well just quit now.

: Michele blogged Guliani's testimony and she found it hard.

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The Daily Stern

EFFING BRILLIANT: David Simon of HBO's The Wire follows Bono's lead and utters the f word in an acceptance speech but this time it is an act of political protest against the FCC. [via Lost Remote]

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