BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis

July 31, 2004

Everywhere art

: Am I the last one to see Sent, an online gallery of art from phone cams? If you want to submit, send pix to submit@sentonline.com. Invited artists include "Weird Al" Yankovic, Mark Cuban, and Will Wheaton.

Blogging in underwear

: Nerve started a photo blog.

Just what we need: more yelling

: I'm watching a one-night-later rerun of Bill Maher's show and the decibel level is rising to the shrill heights of tabloid TV and CNN before it got dull. Yeah, this is helpful, this is smart. Michael Moore and Canadian loser Kim Campbell team up with Maher to beat up Republican Rep. David Drier over the seven minutes -- you know, those seven minutes. They scream for more than seven minutes about the seven minutes. Get a platform, people.

More stupidity. Maher pontificates: "Political conventions are important and they deserve to be broadcast and watched in their entirety." That's naive nostalgia and we don't need Bill Maher to tell us what we should watch.

The only moment to enjoy: Ralph Nader appears and both Maher and Moore get on their knees to beg him to drop out.

Hemlines and weblogs

: The NY Times relegates weblogs to featureville with a Sunday Fashion & Style story about the convention bloggers. Doesn't say much. Or rather, it says too much after a week in which too damned much was said about blogs.

Take that

: David Weinberger responds to CNET's Charles Cooper in a vlog: "Read my pixels: I am not a journalist." Watch it. He explains blogs to journalists, which is to say that bloggers aren't journalists. He also predicts that bloggers won't be credentialed at the next convention because the people there will be blogging.

More foto funnies

: The salute, separated at birth.

Sex sells!

: Steve Hall's wonderful Adrants is supposed to be about advertising. But, like advertising itself, it's really about sex: National Orgasm Week, hot-chick hitchhikers in wet t-shirts, Victoria Secret's college hottie-wear, TV cameraman hires hooker in TV van, Molson's pick-up-chick advice, hot marketing director poses in Playboy to get free ink, Christina Aquilera makes shoes hot. Excuse me while I go take a cold shower.

Boston: The Vietnam Re-education Camp

: As a (graying, middle-aged) child of the '60s, I'm amazed that Vietnam became a key campaign bragging point in Kerry's acceptance speech.

Vietnam had become such a dirty word to both sides. To the antiwar side, it represented a wrong; to the prowar side, it represented failure; to both, it came to mean shame. And today, in Iraq, Vietnam came to mean quagmire to the antiwar side. The word was as loaded as a bomber headed for Hanoi Harbor.

Yet here was John Kerry -- ten-hut! reporting for duty! -- masterfully playing every side to his favor: He fought in Vietnam, so he can run an army. He fought against Vietnam, so he can keep us out of a quagmire.

Vietnam, the word, had been rehabilitated before our eyes. There was not a moment's hesitation, not a decibel's hush surrounding the word in Boston. Vietnam suddenly became a happy word, something to brag about: Mom, apple pie, and Tet.

I never thought I'd live to see this day. Vietnam, the word, truly divided this nation -- nothing like red-state-blue-state hype we endure from talk-show twits these days. Vietnam brought war to the streets around that Democratic convention. Vietnam divided families (almost mine). Vietnam ousted a President.

Clearly, Kerry is counting on Vietnam ousting another President. He hopes the doves ('60s word) will see him as the guy to avoid fighting another Vietnam. He hopes the hawks will see him as the guy to avoid losing another Vietnam.

And so, he surrounds himself with vets and pictures of war and pictures of protest and he salutes and we are all re-educated like ARVN officers let out of camp in Hanoi. Vietnam is now a happy word, an honorable word, a word that means success by avoiding failure. Vietnam is frigging nostalgia. Vietnam is a word meant to unite, not divide.

Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh.

Media explodes

: Seth Godin has words of great wisdom for media and advertising machers (and it's not even a manifesto):

According to MarketingVOX, online media accounts for 12% of media consumption. That's a stunning rise: one out of eight, up from zero in just ten or so years.

At the same time, though, they report that online media accounts for just 2% of ad spending.

This could be because online media doesn't work (but it does)
or that it's hard to buy advertising in it (but it isn't)
or that it's radically underpriced and a bargain (which may be true).

The real reason is pretty obvious: organizations hate to change. (so do people, but that's a different story).

Whenever you are faced with a situation where your competition is afraid to change but you can see the reality of the situation, you have a huge opportunity. This is the biggest growth and market share opportunity in at least a decade.

Short version: corporations, politicians, non-profits and even individuals who overinvest in online will see the same spectacular bounce that companies saw from TV in the fifties and sixties.

: Add to this Barrons practically writing print's obit. Add to that Jupiter's contention that online ad spending will exceed magazine ad spending by 2008. Now subtract half of all that because of (a) hype, (b) experience, (c) prudence... and you still have an upheaval in the media and marketing industries. And it has just begun.

July 30, 2004

If markets are a conversation... and news... so should politics be

: After I blogged that the political conventions should be distributed across the country, Cameron Barrett, former chief blogger for Wesley Clark, emailed me to report that he had proposed just that to the DNC. Sadly, they didn't take him up on the smart plan. Now Cam tells us about it.

He told the DNC that it "needs to start moving away from the 'broadcast politics' of the past 40 years and more towards something called 'participatory politics' " and proposed building a network of thousands of Democrats' blogs for the convention. He told the DNC in May:

By opening up the communication between those attending the Convention and the general public, it enhances the idea of inclusion, participatory democracy and openness -- best represented by the Democratic Party.
All politics is ultimately local. Delegates are at the Convention representing their constituencies, their interest groups, their politicians and the American people of the Democratic Party. Providing a categorized online communication architecture that outlines this for the American public so they can participate in the conversations they care about the most with the delegates, their politicians and other concerned Americans is a crucial step. The Bush-Cheney campaign and the RNC is all about command and control, with their army of trained underlings. The Democratic Party (and, ultimately the Kerry campaign) should be about channeling the diversity of their supporters in ways that benefit the Party. The core concept here is bi-directional communication -- communication that goes in both directions, from the top down but also from the bottom up.
Alas, they weren't ready for the future.

Cam told the Democrats that a thousand Democrats' blogs beat one Democratic Party blog. Amen.

He also wishes that the bloggers who had attended had involved the citizenry more, soliciting their questions and trolling the hall to get answers.

The missed story in Bostn

: What I really wanted bloggers to do in Boston was find the stories that weren't being covered. They didn't, frankly, because there weren't stories worth covering. That's why bloggers covered themselves and why the press covered bloggers; it was all that was new. Or so it seemed.

Jay Rosen found the story that was truly missed, a story that is about more than the convention; it's about America; it's about the world; it's about our age and it was right under thousands of noses for news in Boston:

Security. It was all about insecurity, really. It was telling us that we live in a different world than the last time there was a poltiical convention. If there needed to be something "new" to report, it was not, by god, the bloggers. It was this: the reason we needed all this security. It not only spoke of politics, but world politics, and not in an abstact way, but in every way a person can experience life. Hey, what was all this security about? And who authored it? Ultimately, Al Queda did. So things had to stop short of ultimately.

That was a story I think we missed. The unbelievably out-in-force Security--double searches, forced to walk through pens made of wire, and much, much more--was like a stream of data telling us a lot about the state of the nation, the state of the world, and, yes, the seriousness of this election-- and of the convention itself, a political event after all....

I think all 30,000 of us missed the story of what the security invasion was telling us about the state of the nation, which is bound up with other nations on the globe we live on, and actors beyond that category, too. But that would lend an out-of-control and unintentional gravity to proceedings that are supposed to be fun and rah-rah....

It wasn't reported, Jay says, because "it would have required us to admit it: Al Queda also came to the convention."

And Al Qaeda will be coming to New York next. But then, the reason this is a story is that Al Qaeda lives next to us every day now.

Bravo for Apple

: I kvetched earlier about my Apple problems and so I need to be fair and say that an assistant manager named Ron at the Short Hills Apple store rescued me and swapped my hosed iPod for another one. I had to grovel only a little. He went around procedure but he gave the customer a win and, as I told him at the end, "you've made a friend."

On the one hand...

: Steve Safran at Lost Remote says it's time to end this network timewaster:

We have to stop the silly, stupid and pointless practice of having one Democratic analyst and one Republican analyst for every political event and story. It adds absolutely nothing to the viewers' understanding of a story to have people from both sides spinning. Want to help the viewers? Put lots of information in context, with background reports and information on your website. Use neutral observers and thoughtful interpreters of politics. Pretend balance is worse than no balance.

Our pal, Jeff

: Jeff Greenfield is probably the bloggers' best booster in big media because he earnestly likes the things (it's not just a fad) and he's influential. He says to TVNewser:

I think the real-time quality to the opinions, corrections, and other voices is terrific; when someone makes a reference to another voice, says 'read the whole thing' and lets you link to the other voice, it's a breakthrough in political dialogue. Unlike some of my colleagues, I don't fear the lack of editorial control, because there's a self-correcting mechanism at work, and if peopel don't like the tone of the blogs, there's still plenty of traditional media around. My big complaint is that it's forced me to get up earlier to read all this stuff--including yours.
Not sure yet what I think of the bloggers' convention coverage. In hindsight, what I think I really want from bloggers is the voice of the voter in the thick of the action -- not new journalists, not new pundits, but just people, citizens. I saw some of that. Jay Rosen also gave me what I expected from him -- abstracting the experience to find its underpinnings and assumptions -- which is amazing since he did it nearly live (for an academic!). I won't try to catalogue the rest yet; as I said, I'm still mulling. But Charles Cooper at CNET didn't need any time to decide what he thought: "most of the credentialed bloggers came off like cyberhayseeds in the big city." But neither did Hugh Hewitt: "The arrival of the bloggers is a big deal. They'll never not be here in the future, and now the question is who gets to blog the debates?" Oh, Hugh, we all can... from our couches.... with beer in hand....

jfk_jr_salute.jpgkerrysalute2.jpgThe John-John moment

: That's what I called it last night: Kerry's John-John moment. Just a tad too cute. Did you cringe just then? I did.

Did they intend this to be a separated-at-birth scene: the Kennedy legacy handed down from Bostonian to Bostonian in Boston, from JFK to JFK to JFK?

Well, Senator, we know JFK; JFK was a friend of ours; Senator, you're no JFK.

F'ing DNC

: The man in charge of the balloons last night dropped more than helium on the DNC; he dropped the F bomb on CNN. If this had gone out on broadcast, many of the legislators sitting in that hall would have the stations and networks that aired that one silly little word hundreds of thousands of dollars each.

Vlogging

: Steve Garfield vlogged the convention. I'm surprised I didn't see more citizen video from Boston.

: Speaking of vlogging, Unmediated finds a very nice video hosting service that lets you add video to your blog. Have at it, future Michael Moores!

Finnish humor

: A Finnish friend of Die Zeit blogger Jochen Bittner sends him a picture of a t-shirt from up/over there with these words on the back:

I AM A BOMB TECHNICIAN. IF YOU SEE ME RUNNING TRY TO KEEP UP.

Blush off the Apple

: I used to be a diehard Apple fan. But then I had a string of machines that were not red but yellow; they were lemons. I deserted Apple.

I've been tiptoeing back. I got my iPod Mini and yesterday I picked up an Airport Express.

But...

The iPod crashed bad last night -- because of Apple's own iPod updater. Thing was working fine. But after updating it wants to be plugged in. It didn't think it was plugged in and wouldn't do anything else. Resets didn't work. Then a reset apparently hosed the drive. iPod dead. I call Apple; wait forever; told I'm six days past my 90-day phone time; I say it was their goddamned updater that did this to me; he listens; he agrees. iPod dead.

I'd play Taps... if I could.

Fred Wilsons' iPod crashed yesterday. Om Malik's iPod died, too. Dreaded clicking noise, just like mine.

The Airport Express is OK, but setup wasn't the breeze it's supposed to be. Worse, when I tried to follow the instructions to set up profiles, it kept crashing my Vaio (Apple's revenge). And the instructions bear no resemblance to the software.

The problem with Apple for years now has been that it pays more attention to design, aesthetics, UI, and advertising than it does to nitty-gritty technical matters. I was thinking about buying a Mac again. Now I'm doubting it.

: UPDATE: Om says it's more than a coincidence, it's a good news story: The iPod updater is killing iPods.

: UPDATE: See the post above. A good Apple manager listened to my problem and whining and went the extra mile to try to solve it. And that is the kind of customer service conversation that keeps me around.

Nose against the window

: Convention bloggers Jay Rosen, Matt Welch, and Tim Blair couldn't get into the overflowing-with-Democrats Fleet Center to watch Kerry, so they had to watch on TV. They might as well have been on the couch at my place. Free beer.

: Kaus has the best on-the-scene report about not being able to be on the scene:

After about fifteen minutes, during which the crowd swelled to about 500, a deputy fire chief appeared on the stairs and announced, in a thick Boston accent, "There's no more room. It's a fie-yah hazard." ...

Alan Colmes arrived, with his producer. He was locked out too, and had a show to do! The cops recognized him and let him in, leading to booing and grumbling in the crowd about favoritism toward Fox. A locked-out dog puppet--I assume it was Triumph the Comic Insult Dog--yelled "Go do your duty, Colmes, and get the crap kicked out of you by Hannity!"

July 29, 2004

Competent

: There is no word that damns with faint praise more than "competent."

John Kerry gave a competent speech tonight. It was a primary speech, the sort of message you give when you're running against and not running for. There were scant mentions of George Bush but this was most a speech against Bush rather than for a Kerry vision.

What bothers me about the speech -- besides the John-John moment with the silly salute -- is its American defensiveness. He leads with making America "respected in the world." As far as I am concerned, this should not be a primary goal of an administration; at most, it is a fringe benefit. We should do what we need to do and if the world respects that, fine; if France doesn't, I still don't give a damn.

And as one of the pundits said tonight, Kerry echoes Bush post-Clinton when he says:

We have it in our power to change the world again. But only if we're true to our ideals - and that starts by telling the truth to the American people. That is my first pledge to you tonight. As President, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.
It was, oddly, a military speech aimed at not using the military. That is a hard line to dance and he danced it: I can use armed forces better than Bush but I will use them less than Bush.

I enjoyed the ovation against Ashcroft. The crowd enjoyed cheering against Cheney.

I wish I heard more about health insurance, more specifics of the plan. Is this just a shift of tax dollars to create credits for premiums or is this reform and universal protection?

There was nothing to hate in the speech, nothing to love. It was competent.

: Robert George of the NY Post, on CNN as a conservative voice, says we just heard the speech of the winner. Nervous Republican.

Instacommunity

: Glenn Reynolds opens up his comments for live blogging of Kerry's speech by his audience.

If you could judge a man by his children...

: Alexandra Kerry, the dark-haired daughter we hear less often, gave a great speech tonight, from telling the story of her father's CPR on a sodden hamster to endorsing her father's poltical vision. She humanized him and his policies. Impressive.

A degree in snot

: Jay Rosen gets an incredible email from a colleague, a fellow journalism professor -- though they are professors from different planets. The email came from professor Thomas L. McPhail of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Jay: Do you tell your j students that they are wasting their time getting a j degree, rather they should just run out and become bloogers and pretend journalists with no commitment to ethics, laws, fairness etc. Tom McPhail ps how are the bloogers at the DNC? I am afraid that in the charge to get the scoop of the conference, that they may send out unedited or unchecked rumours as if it/they were fact. Thanks
Jay says:
That's not the kind of note you edit or change in any way, and I haven't touched it. Now this is the same professor Thomas L. McPhail of the University of Missouri-St. Louis who wound up in dueling quotes with your correpondent (me) in the text of a USA Today article some weeks ago, previewing bloggers at the convention. (It also made Romenesko, the daily bulletin board for journalists.) Here's his quote:
That bloggers get front seats bothers Tom McPhail, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri:

''They're certainly not committed to being objective. They thrive on rumor and innuendo,'' McPhail says. Bloggers ''should be put in a different category, like 'pretend' journalists.''

The priests are nervous, eh? The people are outside the cathedral tacking up their 95 theses and the priests are sticking their fingers in their ears, trying to ignore them, telling each other that those guys outside aren't blessed with the right to perform the sacraments of the church. They think they own "ethics, laws, fairness etc." Hell, they think they own the truth. But, of course, they don't. And what the priests don't see is that the reason the rabble is organizing outside is that they are fed up with the priests and their indulgences and their failures.

Welcome to the First Reformed Church of Journalism, professor.

: UPDATE: Was thinking on the way home... So, Prof. McPhail, what do you tell your students? Do you tell them to ignore these newfangled webloggers? Do you tell them not to listen to their public? Do you tell them that their business will continue on in the future with the same revenue and resources it has had in the past? Do you tell them tell them that journalists are perfect? What do you tell them about Jayson Blair? What do you tell them about the public's lack of trust in the news media? What do you tell them about the magnetic draw that opinionated journalism -- whether FoxNews or the Guardian or weblogs -- has for the public? What do you tell your students, professor?

DNC bounces blogger

: The National Journal reports that Matt Stoller has been bounced as an official DNC blogger on its site because he was critical of Barack Obama on his own Blogging the President site.

I actually wondered whether somebody was cruising for a crash the other day as I read Matt's posts on Blogging the President. The problem is that when you become "official" somewhere, it affects your ability to speak outside of that official capacity: When you say what you think as a person are you speaking as an official?

I actually think that if this story pans out (I've emailed Matt asking him for his view), it's the DNC that comes off worse; it's another blogging booboo. First they invite lots of bloggers and then disinvite some because -- I still don't believe this story -- they suddenly realized that space was limited. If that is true, then they should have thought ahead. And now they reportedly bounce Stoller because he still had the opinions of a blogger and voter on anther site. If that is true, then, again, they should have thought ahead and either recognized that would happen and lived with it or they should have told Matt to be official for the week of the convention and give up the other blog. But in both cases, by not thinking on inch ahead of their Kerry noses, they turned a positive into a negative, needlessly.

There's a lesson here for all organizations that want to get into blogging with their own official blogs -- and for all those who blog for them: Know the groundrules. This is why I think that most large organizations -- especially the DNC -- would have been better off pointing to lots of bloggers and letting the bloggers speak on their own rather than trying to horn their way into the fun like a grandma at a rap concert.

This, by the way, is also why Glenn Reynolds is right that it matters that Duncan Black nee Atrios works for a Soros-backed Media Matters: The perspective matters and the official relationship matters, for your readers want to know when you're speaking officially; they need to know to trust you.

Here are reports on Stoller. The National Journal says:

The deleted blogger, Matt Stoller, was the "blog community coordinator" for the DNCC, which organized the convention here. On Monday, opening day, he critiqued convention keynote speaker Barack Obama by unfavorably comparing him with Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the Democratic candidate for vice president.
Stoller continues to blog on his personal site and retains the credentials he was granted to help other bloggers make preparations to come to the convention, the first major political gathering to grant credentials to such individual Web posters. But the post at The Blogging of the President, where Stoller is the editor, prompted the DNCC to sever its affiliation with Stoller and remove his name from the blog of the committee's Web site.
Taegen Goddard got email reaction from Stoller:
"It's a mischaracterization of the situation. I was a volunteer for the Convention helping with the blog and blog outreach, and I posted on the DNCC blog for some amount of time. We never figured out whether I would be blogging for the DNCC during the Convention... Beyond that, there are several other factual errors in the piece. I didn't compare Obama unfavorably to Edwards, and I am not college age."
See also Dave Winer.
Bottom lines: The DNC should have known that Stoller is a smart blogger with his own opinions and view of the world and it is clumsy and ultimately ignorant of them to let that get in the way. If they had a problem with that they should n ever have had him blog on their own blog -- or they shouldn't have their own blog. And everybody would be well-served to be open and transparent about this.

: UPDATE: Here's Matt's post on this. I'm running out so I don't have a chance to say more; just go read it. Sounds as if, indeed, a reporter streteched the taffy. There are still interesting issues in Matt taking an official role with the DNC as a blog rep and then still blogging here and there - nothing a little transparency won't cure. So I'm glad he has posted.

One America, two Americas... aw, who's counting?

: After hearing the eloquent and embracing Obama speech the night before last declaring that we are, after all, one United States of America, I was amused at reports that Edwards was going to recycle much of his "two Americas" shtick from the primaries. So which is it: One America or two? Edwards ended up soft-pedaling his divided America theme and I'm glad for it. The problem with the campaign and so much around it (see: Fahrenheit 9/11) is the effort to divide us from within. The winner in this election will be the man who brings us together.

July 28, 2004

A nation undecided, not a nation divided

: I think the reason the JibJab animation of Bush v. Kerry singing "This Land is Your Land" has become such a hit and struck such a nerve is precisely because it doesn't take sides: It's quite balanced in its amusing disdain for the foibles of both candidates. That, I believe, represents the views of most Americans: We're each evenly divided trying to decide which we can bear better.

Moore critics under every rock

: Scott Simon -- to me, the caricature of an NPR host and listener, a professional nice guy, a presumed (by association) liberal -- slices into Michael Moore and his credibility in the Wall Street Journal:

Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by Adam Sandler....

In the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote that, "Viewers may come away from Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true," and that he "uses association and innuendo to create false impressions." Try to imagine those phrases on a marquee. But that is his rave review! He lauds "Fahrenheit 9/11" for its "appeal to working-class Americans." Do we really want to believe that only innuendo, untruths, and conspiracy theories can reach working-class Americans?

Governments of both parties have assuaged Saudi interests for more than 50 years. (I wonder if Mr. Moore grasps how much the jobs of auto workers in Flint depended on cheap oil.) Sound questions about the course, costs, and grounds for the war in Iraq have been raised by voices across the political spectrum.

But when 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean has to take a minute at a press conference, as he did last Thursday, to knock down a proven falsehood like the secret flights of the bin Laden family, you wonder if those who urge people to see Moore's film are informing or contaminating the debate. I see more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore. No matter how hot a blowtorch burns, it doesn't shed much light.

Good for you, Mr. Simon.

Obama speaks

: I just watched Obama's keynote on MSNBC. He is good: a star made. He gave an eloquent and positive expression of liberalism. And I am glad that someone is speaking positively about America at a time when we need that, when we are under attack for being America and when we are too often attacking ourselves.

A rose by any other name

: Identity is an element of trust. Identity is also the keystone in the virtue of the age: transparency. Identity matters.

So it's good that Duncan Brown Gray Black (I'm still confused) has revealed himself to be Atrios.

If you want us to trust what you say, then the least you can do is put your moniker where your mouth is not only so we know that you stand behind what you say but also so your public can judge what you say in the context of your experience and expertise and perspective.

Note what Glenn Reynolds says about Black today:

I PROMISED HIM THAT I WOULDN'T OUT HIM a long time ago, but now Atrios has been unmasked as a guy named Duncan Black who, among other things, works for David Brock's Soros-funded Media Matters operation. Nothing wrong with that, but if I were working for, say, Richard Mellon Scaife, I think somebody -- like, say, Duncan Black -- would be making something of it.
Right. Identity matters.

At the Aspen Institute, various of us said that news organizations should put up bios of their writers (and editors, I'd say) on their web sites so the audience can learn more about them. Identity. Transparency. Trust.

Note also that Amazon has just instituted a "Real Names" program for its reviews. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Earlier this month, the Web retailer quietly launched a new system, dubbed Real Names, that encourages users to append to their product reviews the name that appears on the credit card they have registered with Amazon. A logo saying "Real Name" appears beside such customer comments.

Amazon still allows reviewers to sign their comments with pen names, effectively concealing their identity from other Amazon users. But even these reviewers need to supply a credit card or purchase history. Previously, users could easily open multiple Amazon accounts from which they could post multiple reviews of the same product. The new system is intended to block that practice....

More broadly, the new rules attempt to address a perennial problem posed by the anonymity of the Internet: How to identify people who post comments online, be they would-be book critics or people with a bone to pick about a certain product.

Identity and transparency and trust matter for politicians and for journalists and it especially matters in this personal medium.

We've discussed anonymity many times in the comments here so we don't need to launch that again. I just say again that I give more credence and attention to those willing to put their names behind what they say. And for some of those who return frequently to snipe from behind the veil of anonymity, I have taken to ignoring them.

Throw the book at 'em!

: ChangeThis is touting its manifestos before they're published (as PDFs) and is apparently going with the 9/11 Commission strategy for defense against terrorists: libraries.

We signed on Jessica Stern, who is a lecturer in public policy at Kennedy and served on Clinton's NSC.

Instead of studying the roots of terrorism from an office in America, Jessica went to the source--Pakistan, India, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Indonesia. For five years she interviewed terrorist groups, from extremist seminaries in India and Pakistan to refugee camps in Lebanon to Christian cults in Texas.

She found that terrorism has become a way of life, a profession, that no amount of bombing can change. The War on Terror needs to be a battle for terrorist' minds, not for their camps and ammunition depots.

That's right. If you load up a car with books from the library, you can't fit in a bomb.

My convention coverage

: I didn't watch the convention last night. I went to sleep.

Aren't you jealous?

Turning 9/11 into a fad

: The rush to hug the 9/11 Commission is getting both obnoxious and scary.

Yesterday, John Kerry said:

"If I'd been president last week, I would have immediately said to the commission 'yes, we're going to implement those recommendations."
Well, how about considering them first? How about a little debate? How about trying to improve upon them?

I'm also concerned that the commission is turning into a shadow government. Kerry is talking about keeping them going for another 18 months.

Hmmm. Shouldn't the president and the congress be running our anti-terrorism strategy now?

And last week, Kean and Hamilton didn't do anything to stop speculation that they should get the new intelligence czar job they're pushing for.

Sorry, but that smells like conflict of interest to me: Start a commission, propose a job, get the job, stay in power. There should be a code of ethics for commissions so they stay independent and do not find themselves in conflict of interest: Come and do your job and then go.

July 27, 2004

What's worse than Ann Coulter? An editor, of course

: USA Today hired conservative scorpion Ann Coulter to write about the Democratic National Convention and -- guess what? -- they got Ann Coulter. And it bothered them. So they killed the column. Of course, the column is now online. But what's even better is that the editor's comments are there, too. Boy, editors can look like oafs:

Coulter: As for the pretty girls, I can only guess that it’s because liberal boys never try to make a move on you without the UN Security Council's approval. Plus, it’s no fun riding around in those dinky little hybrid cars. My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call "women" at the Democratic National Convention.

USA Today: NOT FUNNY, I DON'T GET IT.

As Nick Denton once said in an IM to me when I asked why we like blogging so: "no editors."

A politically incorrect post

: This is going to be a politically incorrect post about political correctness but here goes...

Am I the only one who noted how far out of their way the DNC went to find a Muslim woman to speak on behalf of the families of victims of 9/11 last night?

Of course, I don't mean to devalue her sacrifice and suffering one bit or her right to speak on behalf of fellow victims.

But the DNC turned an important moment into a moment of politically correct tokenism.

But wouldn't the DNC have been wise to at least find a fireman's widow, too?

And what is journalism in the end?

: Following on advice on covering the conventions, Doc Searls adds this:

Prove that bloggers are journalists who listen. Prove that we're in conversations, and not just standing on soap-boxes, or "delivering content". Prove that we're about making and changing minds, and not just small-bore op-ed cannons.
Try this idea out for size: The most important principle of blogging is the #5 habit of highly successful people: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Then help the mainstream media understand what bloggers are, and how they work.
Joi Ito adds this:

My conclusion is that much of good journalism is just common sense, and I would even assert that compared to journalists who don't write in their name, have fact-check desks to do their fact-checking and editors to fix their grammar, bloggers are much more accountable and have to take it in the face compared to their anonymous counterparts in the mass media.
One good thing that is coming out of inviting bloggers to the convention is that while the journalists are working to define "blogger," everyone else is working to redefine "journalist."

: Meanwhile, Steve Gilliard [via Duncan Black ... hehe] is unhappy with blogger coverage of the convention and has this to say:

Let's establish two things, one no one gives a shit who you have lunch with, speeches you sit through, or where the media is. Two, people do care about real news....

My one bit of advice: GET OUT OF THE FUCKING HALL.

Because if you guys don't start telling people what happened, it's a waste of time.

: MEANWHILE... Joe Territo covers the convention: Live!

: UPDATE: David Weinberger covering the convention: Live!:

The Convention has been officially open and in full swing for the past 75 minutes, and I've just noticed something: It's very, very boring. But only if you're paying attention.

A failure of imagining... the conventions

: What is the convention in the end?

It's the ultimate in product placement: We put on this show and instead of inserting a can of Coke into the middle of it, we place our candidate there! Only problem is, when nobody watches the show because it bears less reality than a reality show -- I know reality TV; reality TV was a friend of mine; DNC, you're no reality TV -- then the product placement is worth about as much as spam.

So what is the convention in the end?

I'm glad Jay Rosen is there, abstracting the event from within. He's asking the bigger question, as in:

What the hell is this convention, in the end?

Jay goes to the blogger breakfast and listens to AP veteran emeritas Walter Mears, who's supposed to be blogging (who knows where?) "even though he told us--rather absurdly--that he doesn't know what a blog is, or what he's doing with one."

I asked Mears during the breakfast Q & A how much responsibility he thought the news media had for the decline of the conventions, which he had described for us in the usual terms-- not news, just a big show, nothing that's unscripted, and so on.

His answer was "none." Zero responsibility goes to the press. It was the parties that had drained the conventions of meaning, surprise and purpose. In that case, I replied, why are 15,000 media people gathered here to report on something so transparently dumb? "It's a class reunion," said Mears, a big social event for the news tribe. (Chuckles from the crowd.)

This I've heard before, of course, but it's absurdist's view. It amounts to saying: we have no reason, we're just here. Upon this event, editors and news executives spend many thousands of dollars from precious editorial budgets. Do they really sit around saying: "Who are we going to send to the big class reunion this year? Who's ready to party in Boston?" That's even more absurd.

"Absurd"is a nice, academic's way of saying "stupid."

Jay then quotes the convention's CEO (incredulous that such a title exists, as if this were a business with a P&L) bragging that it's a "live television show."

But this too is absurd [read: stupid -ed] because on television's harsh terms the show has been a big flop-- losing most of the audience to other shows, and losing the major networks for all but a few hours over four nights. The convention lacks a host--like Billy Crystal at the Oscars--who can connect with the audience, and thread the show with character. It is undistinguished as entertainment, and weak on narrative: no beginning, middle and end, no rising and falling action. It has all the plot structure of a parade: one thing after after another until the big floats--the acceptance speeches--are rolled by.
Duncan Black says [ooooh, I enjoyed making that link]:
Drudge is reporting that the ratings for the convention are low. I'm not surprised, given the way the media has packaged it (what I saw beforehand). They say it doesn't matter. They're only going to cover an hour here, an hour there, sandwiched between sitcoms. Then, 4 years from now they'll use it as an excuse to say the event doesn't really matter, while sending another 15,000 people to cover it...
Rosen goes on to quote Mears one more time, saying that "the conventions are a memory device. They convey events in the present tense backward in political time. (As Mears himself does when he talks to bloggers.)"

Aha, there's the problem. In all our analyses of the conventions, we keep looking back, trying to recapture lost excitement and entertainment and ratings and involvement... and democracy. And like a 9/11 Commission, we keep looking for someone to blame: Is it the parties' fault? Medias? Ours?

But we're all looking at this the wrong way. We're looking at it like any of the five recent CEOs of AT&T who inherit the dinosaur and don't know what the hell to do with it and so they keep adjusting the rouge on the dinosaur's cheeks, but it's still a dinosaur.

The world has changed, Rex. The political process of old is dead. Media of old is dead.

Conventions were once meant to actually get the people to select candidates. But that ended about 1968, when there was too damned much drama. So then they became scripted media events. But that ended about 1992, when the citizenry started turning away as they were armed with a powerful new weapon: the remote control.

So the conventions that were will never be again and I'm not shedding one damned tear over that.

Rather than asking what the conventions are or what they were, shouldn't we be asking what they should be? Here was my humble suggestion.

We can turn the conventions into citizens' events. In this, the age of dawning citizens' media, why not have citizens' politics. Or we can turn them into sessions to get to know the candidates we've already selected. Or we can just cancel them and save everybody a helluva lot of money. Or we can use this wonderful new distributed architecture of communications we have and spread the conventions across the land.

But, please, let's make this the last year when we keep on asking, what is the convention, in the end?

Techno

: Here's Dave Sifry's first report for CNN on what bloggers are saying.

Too bad his Technorati is pretty technoratty these days; it's not working worth a damn. Call down to the engine room, man. Have Scotty put some more dilithium crystals in the machine! I want my damned Technorati.

The French blogging saga, chapter 2

: Loic LeMeur, ex of UBlog and now of SixApart, answers Stephanie's report on irritated French customers with a lesson on lessons learned starting a business.

There's gold in these thar hills

: Jupiter says that by 2007, online advertising spending will match magazine advertising spending.

A new report from Jupitermedia's JupiterResearch predicts that dollars spent on online advertising... will match dollars spent on magazines by 2007, then surpass them in 2008.

In a sign of how the Internet is rebounding, Jupiter predicts that marketers will spend $8.4 billion on online advertising in 2004, while earmarking $12.2 billion for magazines. In 2007, the two platforms each will get $13.8 billion. In 2008, online ad spending surges ahead, capturing $15 billion, compared to magazines' $14.5 billion, Jupiter predicts....

Web offerings have become "more targeted and much smarter" about how they measure their audience, says Gary Stein, a Jupiter senior analyst.

The Journal also points out that Jupiter has been, well, aggressive with Internet forecasts in the past. So give or take a year.

The man behind the curtain

: Atrios is revealed: His name is Duncan Black and his picture is here. Anticlimax, eh?

July 26, 2004

'Failures of imagination'

: That key phrase of the 9/11 Commission's indictment of history keeps rolling around in my head like a bucket of loose nails. Failures of imagination.

What an absurd and hopeless charge it is. I finally realized that what this really says is that the commission could not come up with failures of fact that lead to the attacks. And so, instead, it trumped up this charge against both recent administrations and countless public servants: OK, they say, so it turns out you could not have known what these insane, evil, murdering religous fanatics would do to America but we say you should have imagined it -- and then you should have protected us from this imagined act and because you did not stop this act you could have only imagined, you failed.

Not to be too flip about this, but such is the indictment every husband knows from every wife (or pick your familial relationship): You should have guessed what I wanted without my having to tell you. It is the perfect can't-win vice grip.

And that is the position into which the 9/11 commission puts past -- and now future -- governments of this country. They set an absolutely unwinnable standard for victory in this war:

It's not a war against terrorism, says the commission. OK, then what is it? It's a war against Islamic fanatics, they say; you should go take out those fanatics, they urge. But beware drastic measures such as regime change. And don't get too uppity and think about installing democracies amid hotbeds of tyranny. You should not invade Iraq and set up a democracy in the heart of the Middle East to set an example. Instead, they suggest, you should work through libraries. (And that is only a slightly unfair summary.) They demand decisiveness but, because they wanted to report to be unamimous, they bleached out all decisiveness from the report's recommendations. Libraries! They could all get behind libraries. Invasion and regime change? Too controversial.

And then, when that doesn't work and the next attack comes -- the attack the commission vaguely warns will come so they can say we told you so -- then they will accuse the administration -- any administration -- of not acting swiftly enough and strongly enough and with sufficient imagination.

It's the can't win conundrum. And it's not terribly helpful.

Nonetheless, politicians and media commentators are falling over themselves to praise the unanimous report of the commission and urge immediate implementation of all its recommendations, whether decisive (and there are some) or namby-pamby (and there are many). Now I'm all for swift and decisive action against terrorism and Islamic extremism -- all for it. But I do feel the need to urge just a moment to ask:

Did the 9/11 commission get it right?

Thank goodness, there are others asking that today. Willliam Safire in The Times frets:

With great fanfare, the 9/11 commission amplified that call for a super-spymaster. This rush to "reform" is stampeding otherwise sensible senators into writing a czarist bill to combine the spying techniques of secret surveillance with the law-enforcement power of the F.B.I., invading the unsuspected citizen's privacy under the rubric of fighting terrorism.

With this fear-driven new groupthink spurred, booted and in the saddle, nobody at this convention stops to ask: Would John Kerry, if elected, be well served by a fixed-term, "cabinet level official" who does not serve, as other members of the cabinet do, "at the pleasure of the president"? What if, in some crisis about pre-emption, they disagreed - would the unelected official prevail? Who would really be in charge?

And suppose one person had budget authority over intelligence-gathering and evaluation as well as F.B.I. investigations - what would become of the rules of evidence that protect the innocent accused? What the czar wants, the czar gets - and one day he could just as easily be a John Ashcroft as a Lee Hamilton.

One looks in vain for a Democrat here in the Boston lovefest to break out of the groupthink enough to say: "Hold on. In the spirit of the 9/11 bestseller, let's use our imagination to discern hidden dangers in unrestrained dot-connecting." Won't happen; in a time of fear, civil liberty butters no political parsnips.

And in the New York Post, Amir Taheri says this is a bureacratic solution because it is the product of bureaucratic thinking.
The commissioners have a politico-technocratic mindset. They are the products of a political culture that assumes that all problems have technical and bureaucratic solutions. Such solutions are standard: create a new layer of bureaucracy, and spend some more money. But that is certainly not going to put the fear of God in Osama bin Laden and his like.

The commission itself was a typical product of such a way of thinking. So it is not surprising that it came up with only two new proposals: one is to create a Cabinet post dealing with intelligence, a twin for the existing Homeland Security tsar. The other is a suggestion to spend money on improving the lives of disaffected youths in Arab and other Muslim countries. I am not kidding!

He goes on to say that, indeed, the Commission didn't get it right.
The report assumes that there is a single, readily identifiable enemy. This is the routine way of political thinking, that took shape during the Cold War.

Anyone with knowledge of the Arab countries and the Muslim world in general would know that this is not the case.

The problem with the current War on Terror is that the democracies, and those Muslims who aspire for democracy, are faced with a multi-faceted threat that assumes numerous forms, from the burning of books to the cutting of throats....

The commission makes an even bigger mistake. By speaking of "political grievances" it tries to explain the Islamists within the parameters of classical logic. Having accused the administration of lack of imagination, the commission, is itself unable to imagine a conflict that is not political in the normal sense of the term.

Right. The commission says it's not just about terrorism. It's about Islamic extremism. But it's more than that. It's about democracy. It's about modernity. It's about civilization. But that's going too far for a unanimous report. So it's about libraries. Says Taheri:
The aims of the "enemy" in question, however, are not solely political.

He will not be happy even if, in the spirit of liberal generosity, you gave him half of your power and wealth. Nor would he settle for a total American withdrawal from the world. Nor would he be satisfied if you helped wipe Israel off the map.

This enemy's conflict with the United States, and alongside it other democracies, not to mention those Muslims who also aspire after democracy, is not political but existential.

He wants to rule you because he thinks he is the holder of a "the highest form of truth."

This enemy wants you, the whole world in fact, to convert to Islam because he believes the advent of Islam abrogated all other religions. Anyone who is not a Muslim is not a full human being.

And fighting that takes, well, imagination.

So, in the end, the real failure of imagination is not (just) past administration's; the failure of imagination is the commission's. The commission, in its unanimity, fails to adequately imagine the extent of the enemy and the means and weapons and resolve it will take to fight that enemy.

If we turn around and swiftly adopt this commission's recommendations and think that we're then safe, we have all suffered a failure of imagination.

Third prize is a week in Boston

: The Washington Post is running a contest for the best political blogs.

Two-fer

: Protobloggers Matt Welch and Tim Blair are blogging together for Reason.

Vox pop

: Technorati just launched Politics.Technorati.com with the latest from bloggers left and right (and I'm gratified to see that I'm both left and right).

Looks like a journalist, smells like a journalist...

: Tom Rosenstiel in today's Boston Globe asks and answers the question, what is a journalist?

A journalist tries to tell the literal truth and get the facts right, does not pass along rumors, engages in verifying, and makes that verification process as transparent as possible.
A journalist's goal is to inspire public discussion, not to help one side win or lose. One who tries to do the latter is an activist.
Neutrality is not a core principle of journalism. But the commitment to facts, to public consideration, and to independence from faction, is.
A journalist's loyalty to his or her audience, even above employer, is paramount.
This new medium shifts that a bit. Today, a journalist is part of his audience -- so call it his public, instead -- and anybody who reports a fact or pushes a question to get to the facts is engaging in journalism. I'm also not sure what the "literal truth" is and I will say that plenty of journalists today make a living passing on rumors (aka terror alerts). I'd say a journalist is one who communicates news and information. What do you say?

Major media merger
: CableNewser Brian Stelter has joined Media Bistro, renaming the blog TVNewser (to cover the nets, too). It's the first of a group of media blogs Laurel Touby is starting to round out her media magnet. I've known about this for a few weeks but was sworn to silence (drat!). This brings together some smart folks who are doing great new things in media. Go take a look.

Reinventing the convention

: The real story of this convention should be the death and reinvention of political conventions. I have some suggestions -- no, I have a damned manifesto -- for reinventing conventions from the bottom up.

It's no news that no news will come from the Democratic National Convention this week -- nevertheless, we apparently need 15,000 journalists and now a gaggle of bloggers to tell us nothing. This is why I decided not to go to the convention. (More on that in a minute.) It's the unevent. It should not exist.

But then I thought about ways to rebuild the convention, to make them relevant and useful -- and democratic -- again:

1. Prove that you are the party that listens. Hold sessions -- not panels, not speeches, not lectures, not platform meetings, but sessions on the BloggerCon model -- with experts and citizens (and politicians listening and not speaking unless spoken to) brought together to have conversations about the issues and solutions that really matter to all of us: health care, education, taxes, defense, terrorism, the economy...

Of course, it won't be a controlled message. That's just the point. It's about listening. It's about having the conversation. If markets are conversations and news is a conversation then politics and government certainly should be a conversation. Democracy is a conversation. Thus Cluetrain meets McLuhan: The medium is the message and the message is, "We are the party that listens."

2. Open the convention to the citizens. Just as the Democrats have opened the media tent to include not just every journalist alive but now also bloggers, so should they open the gates to citizens. By inviting nonpols and unconnected people to those sessions on issues, they would bring the conventions back to the people -- which is precisely who the conventions are supposed to be about. These are supposed to be the one time in four years when the citizens have a voice in politics. But, of course, only pols and the connected can attend. And so the citizens resent the people behind the curtain. The only way to solve that is to invite the people behind the curtain, too.

3. Decentralize the convention. Take those sessions and webcast them and open up a backchannel to involve anyone and everyone who gives a damn anywhere in the country. Want to talk to every state? Then listen to every state.

4. Harness citizens. If you learned anything from Howard Dean, it should be that the people will move mountains for them if you involve them in the process. So all during convention week, hold MeetUps in Boston and across the country and call that the real convention of the real party.

Simple suggestions, really. You can still have your speeches. You can still fight over nominations in the odd chance it comes to that. But you can also listen to citizens, involve citizens, include the nation.

: UPDATE: Quoth Doc Searls:

Power from the people, people. Not the other way around. Finally.
Maybe.
: UPDATE: David Weinberger expects these to be the last old-style conventions:
Will we ever do this again? Is 2004 the last year we're going to have national conventions like these?...

All this is a lot to ask of a city, and it's a lot to do to a city. In four years, with ratings down, the politics purely ceremonial, and the risk of putting an entire political party in one square block ever higher, will the Democrats and Republicans decide that it's time to "think outside" this particular box? Let the delegates vote by absentee ballot and then send the candidates to a series of celebratory parties around the country so "all Americans can share the excitement" -- and also distribute the risk and costs.

Are these the last conventions we're going to hold? Or, once I experience one, am I going to see their value?

Reinventing convention coverage

: The fact that 15,000 journalists are going to the convention is the best evidence that their bosses have absolutely no news judgment.

Nothing is going to happen there. It's not news when nothing happens.

This is the real reason I didn't apply for credential to cover the convention with other bloggers. I said that I wanted to leave room for other citizen journalists who've never been behind the curtain before and that's true. But I also didn't know what the hell I'd write about: I saw myself with my laptop and wi-fi and camera phone and camera and digital recorder and phone modem: all dressed up and nothing to cover.

Now I hope that the bloggers who are covering the convention find the fresh stories and viewpoints that jaded old journalists (like me) can't find. I hope they start conversations the politicians and reporters are no longer interested in starting. As Jay Rosen, who's now in Boston, said in this weekend's Newsday:

I think the bloggers have something to add:

They don't know in advance that what they are doing is meaningless; if they did, they wouldn't do it.

They don't assume that a ritual is an empty ritual simply because it obeys a script, since this is the very essence of ritual, as any Boy Scout or churchgoer can tell you.

Although we're told that "bloggers wear their politics on their sleeves," and things like that, politics is a personal matter for most of them - not a professional interest. Their communication style is citizen-to-citizen, rather than expert-to-layman or media to "mass."

I'm not worried about the bloggers at the convention. They will find something to say; they will find the stories to hear.

But I am worried about my profession if it's stupid enough to send thousands of reporters at huge expense to cover a story that they know isn't there.

Are we nuts?

Last week at the Aspen Institute, I appalled a few of the attendees when I said that if I ran a newspaper -- not likely -- I would not enter journalism contests because they skew journalism to be for journalists.

Well, now I'll add another contrarian contention. If I ran a news organization, I would:

1. Send not one single reporter to the political conventions. I'd get everything I could possibly need from these events off the wires (and blogs) and TV. If news is a commodity -- and it is -- convention coverage is as common as corn.

2. Instead, send reporters across the country to find out what people really care about. No, they wouldn't do man-on-the-street interviews with one-way quotes. They'd get into conversations about the issues (see the post above) to see what really matters to the citizens. And I'd devote resources to polling to see what the people's priorities are and how they match up with the politicians'.

3. Make nonvoters a beat. I'd send a few reporters out to talk to the people who don't give a damn to find out why (and to find out what matters to them instead). No, this isn't about tryhing to increase voter turnout; not our job.

4. Give the convention the play it deserves. The networks, of course, are giving the conventions less prime time coverage because they don't deserve it. If all news organizations followed suit, the parties would be forced to reinvent their conventions (see the post above). I'd still cover the conventions, but not devote big headlines to it unless big news happens. Covering the conventions is like covering the new TV season.

: UPDATE: David Weinberger surveys the new media neighborhood in Boston:

The credentialed bloggers are sitting in the section of the bleachers designated "Blogger Boulevard." Want to know exactly where it is? Easy: It's on the other side of the Rubicon.

This event marks the day that blogging became something else. Exactly what isn't clear yet, and the culture clash is resulting in public functions that, because there is no single culture of blogging, are Dostoyevskian in their awkwardness....

The media are trying to figure us out. The DNC is trying to figure us out. We are always — and in famously self-absorbed ways — trying to figure us out. The difference is that now our presence is undeniable. We are now officially an anomaly.

: UPDATE: Ken Layne points out that TV isn't doing much on the convention hoopla. Meanwhile, the Times has a special section. Must mean TV has better news judgment. Horrors!

The longest week(s)

: Ken Layne turns on the TV and regrets it:

Yes, there's tanning-booth-orange Brian Williams inside the Fleet Center, solemnly reading nonsense about the Democrats' convention. Then there's some reporter introducing the inevitable protest segment with, "But will the protesters be as tightly organized as the convention itself?" Um, probably not! ...
This is going to be the world's longest week. Until the Republican convention, anyway.

Meet the bloggers

: The Wall Street Journal profiles the convention bloggers (or actually has them profile themselves). It's today's free link.
: David Weinberger for Boston.com: "I am highly partisan and usually wrong.... I'm expecting to be bored by the large and delighted by the small, although a good political speech can make me cry.
: Matt Welch for Hit & Run: "One problem is that there's too much stuff, so it's hard to figure out what's important or great until it's too late. Blogs will help that sifting process."
: 16-year-old Stephen Yellin for DailyKos: "I have a different perspective on life and politics than most press members. Most are hardened cynics and realists -- I still have idealism in boatloads."
: Matthew Gross, ex Dean blogger, answers the question, Why should people read your coverage? "'Cause I fought the establishment and the establishment won."
: Jay Rosen: "Don't expect blazing rants."

: And don't forget the disinvited bloggers, too.

: UPDATE: And here's The Times' profile of the convention bloggers.

One outcome of the conventions could be that everybody gets tired of the word "blog."

July 25, 2004

TV twilight

: Howard Fineman goes to a Harvard panel of network news anchors and blogs from his Blackberry:

Still, the event had the air of a valedictory -- a Sunday morning secular service in the dwindling church of network news. The Big Three had to face the fact that their nets are broadcasting only three hours of convention coverage here. They half-heartedly blamed the political parties for draining the events of drama.

Where the votes are

: Joe Trippi says at MSNBC that he's sick of pols trying to find votes in cute places -- among soccer moms -- when the key is youth in "unlikely places:"

: Howard Stern. Recent polling suggests that fully 4 percent of the electorate are paying attention to what Howard Stern says and are inclined to follow his lead when it comes to who should be our next President. And these are 4 points who have never voted before—fed up with politics as usual, or politics as a waste of time—people who are suddenly engaged.... If Stern continues to tell them that their vote matters and that they can make a difference, they will vote....
: Votervirgin.com and like minded websites. Voter Virgin is—you guessed it—a site promoting the notion that young people need to lose their virginity, and vote for the first time. "It’s OK to vote and you don’t have to tell your parents you are doing it." ...
: Blogs. Those daily journals that millions of young people (and now most campaigns) post on the Internet are already playing a huge part in this year’s campaign. With readerships that most daily newspapers in this country would envy, bloggers like Instapundit, DailyKos, Atrios and Wonkette! have actually been credentialed for next week’s Democratic Convention in Boston. They are at the dynamic center of the political debate, giving disaffected voters an instantaneous way to speak their mind and talk back to the political establishment. No more “letters to the editor,” even by e-mail. Blogs happen in real time and politicians and pundits who ignore them do so at their own peril.

The keys to this election may well be in the hands of Howard Stern’s loyal fans, virgin voters and the blogger brigades. Think I’m kidding? Check back with me after election day and we’ll see who’s laughing then.

Disinvited bloggers get ink

: Somebody in big media -- the LA Times, to be exact -- finally gives attention to the bloggers disinvited to the Democratic National Convention.

The musical echo chamber

: The Toronto Star says that the Walkman is the original echo chamber:

In many ways, the Walkman and its spawn — portable CD players, Apple iPods and other digital music players, even the multi-use cellphone — really have changed the world, and not necessarily for the better.

"Personalized consumption and the relentless individualization of technology over the past 25 years can easily be traced back to the Walkman," says Dr. Graeme Turner, a professor of cultural studies at the University of Queensland in Australia.

"The Walkman significantly provided a separate cultural space for its users, no matter where they went. And they could decorate that personal space the way young people decorate their bedrooms ... It was not like the TV, stereo sound system, or radio. It was personal and mobile."

The Walkman, says Turner, was deliberately marketed to youngsters, perfect targets.

"It allowed them to escape from the world, but in a really obvious way. For the first time they could listen to their personalized music selections on homemade tapes wherever they went. They could reinforce their self-image by focusing only on the music that contained the codes and messages they needed or wanted. They could move conspicuously to rhythms no once else could hear ... and if they really wanted to be noticed, they could turn up the volume so that others could hear ...

The technology-driven personalization of taste — manifested in these post-Walkman days in portable CD players, digital music downloading and playback devices, mobile wireless Internet communicators, the ubiquitous PDA (personal digital assistant), mobile telephones and text messaging — represents both a repudiation of former modes of social transaction that were necessarily communal, such as music shared in live performance settings, and a fragmentation of social activity.

As well as the privatization of identity, Turner adds, who says the Walkman has had "enormous cultural, sociological and psychological consequences.

"We may think we're connected to the universe, we may well be in control of our personal space as a result of these technologies, we may think we're networking, but it's in a one-on-one system. It's a fetishization of connectedness, an illusion."

Whenever you hear people wailing about fragmentation, what you really hear is someone complaining about a loss of control. The way I look at it, fragmentation means choice.

There is no social advantage in being forced to listen to somebody else's taste in music; it's bad enough that I have to hear Z100 when the kids are in the car. And there's certainly no advantage in having conversations on subways instead of listening to my own music; such conversations usually lead to homicide.

Another prof sees the real import of the Walkman: It changed an industry:

The Walkman is the watermelon seed on which the music empire slipped and fell, according to Jennifer Brayton, assistant professor of sociology at Ryerson, a specialist in technology and media studies, and a DJ for 20 years....

"It gave young urban people a new kind of geographical freedom, a world without parental supervision, an environment they could make to their own liking."

But the self-creation of personal musical landscapes is anathema to the recording industry, a threat to its revenue, and the industry fought back by lobbying successfully for levies on blank tape and blank CDs, Brayton says, but ultimately to no avail.

"The Walkman and its digital offspring have changed the way music is made and marketed now by millions of individual artists working as independent businesspeople. They brought an end to music as a monolithic industry."

And this prof says that, contrary to what the other prof says, Walkmen are a social invention:
And the machines invite an odd sort of social overture, she adds. "You see kids asking each other what they're listening to on their headphones, implying a sense of sharing but without the actual experience. Music used to be a communal experience. The technology initiated by the Walkman hasn't increased social connections. Quite the opposite."

To the point

The headline on Dan Okrent's column today: "Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?"
And the lead: "Of course it is."

July 24, 2004

The nicest thing anybody ever said about me...

: Greg Piper: "Jeff Jarvis, no right-wing nut by any means..."

Change for the sake of ChangeThis

: Something about ChangeThis has been bugging me. I was mulling over precisely what it was when Clay Shirky beat me to it and posted what bugs him about it. So I'll link to his nits and add my piks.

ChangeThis says in its manifesto (PDF) that it will publish the manifestos (PDFs) of others about changing things. So what problem could I have with that? Well....

: First, I don't buy change as a virtue in and of itself. That's something I would have expected to hear in Moscow (in the old days): Revolution for revolution's sake. But, of course, change can be for good or bad. 9/11 changed the world and not one bit for the better. I don't trust political candidates who only push change as a slogan without substance. I don't trust movements that do that, either. For them, change is the means and the end.

Wouldn't it have been better if they'd called the effort DiscussThis? But that's not what they really want.

: The effort is essentially undemocratic. It's snotty. "People are making emotional, knee-jerk decisions, then standing by them, sometimes fighting to the death to defend their position." Oh, yeah, what people? Name two. I distrust people who make such vague and damning generalizations about people, don't you?

: Whose fault is this? How did mankind get into this state? Who's the boogeyman? Media, damnit, it's all media's fault, big, bad media. The bold -- read: tabloidy -- headline on the site says: "THE PROBLEM LIES IN THE MEDIA". Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah:

In the old days, we had the time and inclination to consider the implications of a decision. Everyone wasn't in quite so much of a hurry. At the same time, most conversations (and most arguments) were local ones, conducted between people who knew each other.
In what old days? Mesopotamian old days? These are the sort of naive and vague blanket statements I'd expect to read in a fifth grader's paper. It continues:
Today, it's very different. Television demands a sound bite. A one hundred word letter to the editor is a long one.
Radio has become a jingoistic wasteland, a series of thoughtless mantras, repeated over and over and designed to fit into a typical commute.
Even magazines have lost their ability to present complex arguments that take more than a minute or two to digest. BusinessWeek would rather put another picture of Jack Welch or Bill Gates on the cover than actually teach its readers something new.
Well, we are busy. You think media is doing this out of some secret, evil agenda: "Heh heh heh," cackle Murdoch and Redstone and Eisner and Welch in their secret lair, "we are meeting the prime directive of our master to shorten the attention spans of the world!" Says ChangeThis:
The winners are the media companies (that exist to sell ads and attract the maximum audience size) and the demagogues and fundamentalist leaders that gain in power when large numbers support them—regardless of the accuracy or usefulness of their position.
Hooey. Things are shorter because the market wants it that way. I just went to two focus groups (more on that later) where that was the one, clear, overriding message from the people: "Don't waste our time!"

Clay says:

Change This is one of the last stands for an idea of the Old Left — media = force. This belief, present since Marx and Engels put state control of media on the Communist Manifesto’s To Do list, says that media is a strong locus of control over the individual. In this view, when you alter media, you alter the public’s worldview, as they are both pliable and mute.
We're not mute anymore, are we? We're writing weblogs. Ah, but ChangeThis doesn't like that, either...

: Clay points out that when ChangeThis ascribes similar sins to weblogs, it only insults the audience, the people, the citizens again. ChangeThis kvetches:

Alas, blogging is falling into the same trap as many other forms of media. The short form that works so well online attracts more readers than the long form. Worse, most blogs stake out an emotional position and then preach to the converted, as opposed to challenging people to think in a new way.
Clay responds:
Look at the charge Change This lays at the feet of weblogging — people like to read short things they agree with more than long things they disagree with.
...if the most popular weblogs are trafficking in cant, that’s because of the readers, not the writers, since it is the readers who decide which weblogs are popular.
: So what is the ChangeThis solution? It will solicit and select and publish more manifestos as PDFs:
ChangeThis doesn't publish e-books or manuscripts or manuals. Instead, we facilitate the spread of thoughtful arguments…arguments we call manifestos. A manifesto is a five-, ten- or twenty-page PDF file that makes a case. It outlines in careful, thoughtful language why you might want to think about an issue differently.
Well that's the most ridiculous part of all, and the most ironic. ChangeThis decries the control of media but then reveals itself to be a media control freak. PDFs are all about control: You publish them to an audience who can only read them, not change them, not react or interact with them. ChangeThis says don't changethat!

That's a pretty bad way to communicate with the world. Weblogs are better. But weblogs are uncontrolled. They scare ChangeThis the way their audience apparently does:

The problem, of course, is that in our electronic universe it's easier than ever for one charismatic demagogue to sway the opinions of millions of people—without resorting to rational thought, provable assertions or the longterm implications of their efforts. Television and the Internet haven't improved our ability to make rational decisions—to change our mind at the right time. They've made it worse.
Which is to say: We're all a bunch of stupid sheep.

No, I'd actually say the Internet has helped immensely at our ability to make rational decisions. We can find information from any source. We can discuss. We can fact-check even the big guys. Ah, but to buy that you have to have some faith in us.

: ChangeThis did start a blog but misunderstands the essence of the form: It puts the first post on top. That is a big-media way of looking at the world; it assumes that the first word is the right word and that the author doesn't learn and change.

And they don't allow comments on their blog, of course.

: This appears to be the work of Seth Godin -- which really shocks me, since he respects the power of the market -- and some interns, who have all set themselves as the ones to judge which arguments and manifestos are worth distributing and which are not.

That's the old world, folks. While you weren't looking, the world and media changed. Now -- via blogs and Technorati and the remote control -- we the people control more of media and will control more every day. We don't need editors and publishers to create our manifestos. We create them whenever we want on these newfangled things called blogs.

I'm sure there will be interesting, worthwhile things said in various of the PDF manifestos to come. But they all would be better said on blogs where we the people could link and interact with them... and where we all could ImproveThis.

: UPDATE: Ernie Miller piles on.

: UPDATE: Fred Wilson thinks I'm being mean. An email correspondent said I was ungenerous.

Perhaps. But that's my real complaint about ChangeThis: It is ungenerous and mean to the people. It's not about weblogs v PDFs (a battle damned easy to handicap). It's about top-down control vs. bottom-up control.

Software v. law

: Following my riff the other day on how society will change as former programmers take over the roles now filled by former lawyers (see also Rick Klau's better take), Clay Shirky pointed me to James Grimmelmann's riff on the essential morality of law v. software (which follows on Lawrence Lessig's thesis that code is law). I think this is looking at things through the wrong side of the prism: What's more interesting to me than laws or software is the people in front of and behind them: What do each say about their creators; how do each affect society? Still, Grimmelmann's essay is a provocative read and I like this thread of conversation -- a culture of lawyers v. a culture of programmers -- and hope it keeps going.

: UPDATE: Tomas Kohl respectfully disagrees about a programmers' utopia:

Programmers are chaotic. They constantly challenge the causal nature of programming languages and combat the impossible. They know that problems can be fixed only temporarily as they tend to resurface later and in greater numbers. When they make a mistake, they rarely admit it, and concentrate on shifting blame on Microsoft instead - remember that the word flamewar is synonymous with programming newsgroups (must have been invented there, actually). They do live in details, love details, and rarely see the big picture. They abhor transparency (of their code) as it makes them vulnerable (no one can fix it but them), and their cubicles, though theoretically open, are bastions, fortresses, bunkers; don't ever ask them about anything, use ICQ and pray that you'll be answered.

July 23, 2004

Add another one

: Just saw via my Technorati that columnist Michelle Malkin is now blogging.

Getting 9/11 backwards

: If I were writing the 9/11 Commission report, I would have started with the recommendations and then used the narrative to back up those recommendations.

By starting with and rehashing the past, the commission continues the rhetoric of blame it engaged in through its hearings.

And then, rather than wallowing in the finger pointing and coulda-shouldas, the Commission would have focused attention on the future and the more urgent issues facing us, namely:

But the enemy is not just “terrorism,” some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy.The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism—especially the al Qaeda network, its
affiliates, and its ideology....

It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground—not even respect for life—on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated....

The present transnational danger is Islamist terrorism.What is needed is a broad political-military strategy that rests on a firm tripod of policies to • attack terrorists and their organizations;
• prevent the continued growth of Islamist terrorism; and
• protect against and prepare for terrorist attacks....

All that sounds good. But then the Commission utterly loses its balls. The tough talk turns to UNesque generalities. This is war. Force must be met with force, not rhetoric.

The report identifies breeding grounds for terrorist vermin:

• western Pakistan and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region
• southern or western Afghanistan
• the Arabian Peninsula, especially Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and the nearby Horn of Africa, including Somalia and extending southwest into Kenya
• Southeast Asia, from Thailand to the southern Philippines to Indonesia
• West Africa, including Nigeria and Mali
• European cities with expatriate Muslim communities, especially cities in central and eastern Europe where security forces and border controls are less effective
The report goes on to make recommendations regarding Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. Then it turns to wimpy, Coke-commercial foreign policy that does not answer the question of how to bring democracy to the Middle East and rid it of terrorism. Put on your Birkinstocks and get our your guitar as you read this:
The U.S. government must define what the message is, what it stands for. We should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors. America and Muslim friends can agree on respect for human dignity and opportunity.
What the hell does that mean? According to the Commission, we will win this war in... libraries?
• The United States should rebuild the scholarship, exchange, and library programs that reach out to young people and offer them knowledge and hope.Where such assistance is provided, it should be identified as coming from the citizens of the United States.
Excuse me, Mr. bin Laden, shhhhhhh!

: There are good recommendations in the report, of course. But the more I read of it, the less impressed I am.

Last night, Aaron Brown and this morning the Washington Post poured dutiful praise on the commission and its report. I still dissent. The commission hurt its own credibility by comporting itself with partisanship and finger-pointing during its hearings. And its report does not bring the vision and force we need. It merely stirs the muddy waters of politics.

But then, a commission cannot lead. A leader will give us vision and force. The question is whether we have one.

A place for my stuff

: Marc Canter and I find kismet in a place for my stuff/a digital lifestyle aggregator.

Back at the front

: Four years and one campaign after he started his pathbreaking, groundbreaking, backbreacking granddaddy blog of blogs, Ken ("We fact-check your ass") Layne is back, blogging again. Bravo!

As we now know, what actually happened is the non-journalists figured out just how easy it was to crank out opinions. And instead of a million tough-ass reporters breaking and making news from wherever it happened, we've got a million little Jonah Goldbergs and Maureen Dowds, all typing their little opinions based on the same AP copy....

That so many of the bloggers are better than the Professional Columnists doesn't make me feel any happier about the way this thing has shaken down. (There's only a handful of good columnists in this country, along with many hundreds of awful cliché hustlers. Being as "good" as some no-name filler hack from Scripps-Howard or whatever is still being not very good at all. And you already know that, in your heart, so I'll shut up about it.) ...

Anyway, it is still early in the battle, and over these next six weeks we'll get to see if bloggers are any better at covering a meaningless dog show -- minus the charming dogs, but still featuring the bug-eyed Ron Reagan Jr. Then, maybe, we'll see people with the time and leisure income to become one-person newspapers, wandering around, finding interesting tales, making up elaborate lies on a Mark Twain scale (you people can do better than Jayson Blair), posting interesting photographs, interviewing real humans, etc.

July 22, 2004

About those Saudi flights

: Michael Moore made much hay over the flights of Saudis out of the U.S. after September 11th. It's as if the 9/11 Commission went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 and wanted to respond directly; it boxed a special section on page 329.

Here is a transcript of what Moore said:

MOORE (VO): It turns out that the White House approved planes to pick up the bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis. [Listing of flights to Saudi Arabia.] At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes [Close Up: “SAUDIA ARABIA”] carried the Saudis and the bin Ladens out of the US after September 13th. [CU: Scan down long list of flights, focusing on the 9/13 date.] In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country....
MOORE (OS): Did we do anything when the bin Ladens tried to leave the country?
UNGER: No, they were identified at the airport. They were—they look at their passports and they were identified.
The Commission said:
Flights of Saudi Nationals Leaving the United States
Three questions have arisen with respect to the departure of Saudi nationals from the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11: (1) Did any flights of Saudi nationals take place before national airspace reopened on September 13, 2001? (2) Was there any political intervention to facilitate the departure of Saudi nationals? (3) Did the FBI screen Saudi nationals thoroughly before their departure?
First, we found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13, 2001. To the contrary, every flight we have identified occurred after national airspace reopened.
Second, we found no evidence of political intervention.We found no evidence that anyone at the White House above the level of Richard Clarke participated in a decision on the departure of Saudi nationals. The issue came up in one of the many video teleconferences of the interagency group Clarke chaired, and Clarke said he approved of how the FBI was dealing with the matter when it came up for interagency discussion at his level. Clarke told us,“I asked the FBI, Dale Watson . . . to handle that, to check to see if that was all right with them, to see if they wanted access to any of these people, and to get back to me. And
if they had no objections, it would be fine with me.” Clarke added, “I have no recollection of clearing it with anybody at the White House.”
Although White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card remembered someone telling him about the Saudi request shortly after 9/11, he said he had not talked to the Saudis and did not ask anyone to do anything about it.The President and Vice President told us they were not aware of the issue at all until it surfaced much later in the media. None of the officials we interviewed recalled any intervention or direction on this matter from any political appointee.
Third,we believe that the FBI conducted a satisfactory screenin