BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

November 10, 2004

Arafat dead

: It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Reporting for duty

: Tim Oren had a most cool time at war college and I only wish he could tell us more about citizens' media and foreign affairs. But if he did, he'd have to delete us.

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Ego v. id

: Robert Samuelson says in the Washington Post that it's not red v. blue or issue v. issue; it's psychological:

"Every liberal [thinks he's] intellectually superior to conservatives," Paul Begala, a former Clinton administration official, remarked on CNN. "Every conservative I know wants to think of himself as morally superior." Though these are generalizations (as Begala admitted), they represent real psychological imperatives. Politics increasingly strives to feed these self-images. The easiest way to make your people feel better is to cast their people as immoral, stupid, evil, corrupt or greedy. Politics, news and entertainment merge, because all seek to satisfy psychological needs....

Although America isn't polarized, our political and media elites are working hard to make it so.

Amen.

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Patience

: Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post uses the example of East Germany to say that even the smoothest transition to democracy isn't a one-month affair. It takes a generation. That's a lesson for Iraq.

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F the FCC

: That's not winter you feel coming. That's the chill of the FCC regulating speech. An Iowa station decided not to run Saving Private Ryan for fear of FCC fines. Its statement:

As many of you may be aware, the Federal Communications Commission has changed its standards for certain content related to programming broadcast before 10pm. These changes followed the Janet Jackson incident at the Super Bowl earlier this year. The inconsistent manner in which the FCC is choosing to apply these rules puts TV stations like ours in a most difficult position. As this relates to Saving Private Ryan, our concern centers on whether the FCC would consider the context in which the intense adult language and graphic battleground violence is presented in the movie. Would the FCC conclude that the movie has sufficient social, artistic, literary, historical or other kinds of value that would protect us from breaking the law? Can a movie with an "M" rating, however prestigious the production or poignant the subject matter, be shown before 10pm? With the current FCC, we just don't know. This is the case even though this same movie has been broadcast in primetime twice before on this station without complaint. Adding to our frustration is the fact that a fine motion picture like Saving Private Ryan can be shown on cable or satellite without any government agency restriction or regulation.

We regret that we are not able to broadcast a patriotic, artistic tribute to our fighting forces like Saving Private Ryan. However, on this Veterans Day, we do wish to pay tribute to all the men and women -past and present -who so nobly serve our country.

[via LostRemote]

: UPDATE: Lost Remote reports that 20 more stations dropped the movie.

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Bah humblog

: The Washington Post's Jennifer Frey reviews Polar Express and says, "To not adore it is to feel like a scrooge."

Meet Scrooge:

In the NY Times, unknown critic Manohla Dargis tries to show off in a most obnoxious way about a children's movie (my emphasis added):

It's likely, I imagine, that most moviegoers will be more concerned by the eerie listlessness of those characters' faces and the grim vision of Santa Claus's North Pole compound, with interiors that look like a munitions factory and facades that seem conceived along the same oppressive lines as Coketown, the red-brick town of "machinery and tall chimneys" in Dickens's "Hard Times." Tots surely won't recognize that Santa's big entrance in front of the throngs of frenzied elves and awe-struck children directly evokes, however unconsciously, one of Hitler's Nuremberg rally entrances in Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will." But their parents may marvel that when Santa's big red sack of toys is hoisted from factory floor to sleigh it resembles nothing so much as an airborne scrotum.

Oh, come on. I haven't seen the movie; plan to. But this kind of look-at-me-I'm-wearing-a-thong writerly exhibitionism is just plain obnoxious. Has The Times no editors? Did no one read this and say, "Come on, you went a mile too far, try again"? Santa and Hitler? Santa and scrotoms? No one?

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Exploding radio

: At the well-stocked snack table at the Foursquare conference, I spotted a badge that said "Sirius" and I dropped my muffin to make sure to congratulate the man for getting Howard Stern and helping to reinvent radio. I handed him my day-job card but also my blogcard, which advertises "blatherings on citizens' media, politics, technology, and Howard Stern." It's my fan-club card. The nice man didn't run away.

I suspect that Stern will be on satellite sooner than later. After a brief hiatus when he wouldn't mentioned satellite for fear of causing some corporate upheaval at Viacom, Stern has started talking about it again and also has started making noise about whether Sirius will buy out his terrestrial contract so all can move on. There's also been a little chatter about whether Viacom should buy Sirius but I doubt that.

This got me wondering about what I would do if I were in Viacom's shoes. I hope they don't pluck the nearest Stern clone. It's hard to call that the "safe" choice but it is; it's the obvious and dull choice. They need to reinvent radio.

But then I thought about the man with the Sirius badge. It's so much easier for him to reinvent radio. And for you, you podcasters, you.

Broadcast radio is stuck in the same bind as the rest of old media: They're mass in a new world of niches. They can't afford to go niche; the franchise is too valuable, the revenue too big, the stockholders too antsy. They, like TV broadcasters, have to pray they find the next big thing (but not so big that they get fined to hell and back by the FCC).

What would you do if you were programming any of these entities? I'll start a list. But I'd love to see what kinds of radio you'd like to hear -- whether on broadcast or on satellite or via podcasting. My start:

: Reality radio: The best part of Stern besides Stern is his audience and their often startling creativity. Their song parodies and gags are often inspired (and, yes, just as often insipid). What about the first radio station that makes the audience the star, that highlights the best pieces and parodies and rants, challenging the people to create ever better bits. It works on broadcast or on the upstarts.

: Niche radio: The dating show -- real people, real dates. The new-mom show. The divorce show. The retirement show. The job-hunting show. The gadget show.... This won't work on broadcast. But it most definitely works on podcasting. And it works on satellite if they'd be smart enough to also podcast it so you don't have to schedule listening. This isn't appointment radio. It's download radio.

: Reading radio: Read the stuff I don't have to read -- the latest issue of The New Yorker, the best op-eds, the occasional blog essay. Surprise me.

Just a start... what do you want to hear?

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Dinosaur du jour

: I really should stop giving attention to big, old media Flintstones who bang their clubs on their heads and insult bloggers (also known as the public) to get attention. But I guess I can't resist revealing the idiocy of these blind fools.

The doofus du jour is Randall Rothenberg, once-was ad columnist for the NY Times now biding time in AdAge and as "director of intellectual capital" for Booz Allen (that is, he plays editor of a magazine nobody reads for an overpriced consultancy desperate for attention). There's no link on the AdAge site (I've been trying to get to editor Scott Donaton to bug him about this) and it's significant that I've seen no one else quote the column (guess fewer people read you than read blogs, Rothenberg) so I'll retype a few of the dingleberries for your entertainment:

Having reflected on blogs for the better part of two year, and having participated in the sport for a short two months, [note that he doesn't have the balls to give us the address - ed] I am prepared to report that blogging is little more than hype dished out largely by the unemployable to the aimless.

Rather like columns, eh?

Who in the world has the time to read this crap?

He also doesn't have the balls to list examples of crap. It's just all crap, it seems. As if crap can't be printed on paper.

Do some bloggers have sway? About as much as your average op-ed columnist.

I don't get the insult there. It's news that a mere blogger crapping crap onto a screen can have the influence of an honored print columnist.

A few even have meager, self-sustaining ad support.

And how much do you make from your column, Randall? Care to compare the take to Josh Marshall's or various of Nick Denton's blogs?

And, sure, blogs contributed to the outing of the false "60 Minutes" report on Bush's National Guard service. But a million monkeys filing second-by-second observations on Web sites would undoubtedly stumble on the real author of Shakespeare's plays.

I leave that one to you, dear readers. Comment among yourselves.

Blogs are this year's fad. Decentralizing the power of the press is certainly a signal development. Will a million unemployed press barons emerge? No--only the few who have something important and original to say. In the case of blogs, McLuhan got it wrong: The medium isn't the message. The message is the message.

Turn the mirror on yourself, commentator. You do no reporting for this dump. If you had, if you talked to the advertisers and agencies I've talked to recently, you'd find smart people who realize that this is about a new conversation with the market. They are eager to figure it out. Did you help them one bit? Did you impart any new information? Did you give them any evidence of your pissy position? No, sir, the only thing you're right about is that the message is the message and you don't have one.

: ON THE OTHER HAND.... I'm catching up on my AdAges and in the previous week's issue, Rance Crain (aka the boss) writes a smart column on blogs, the election, and marketing.

So marketers want consumers to be in control, do they?...

Be careful what you wish for. What most marketers haven't come to grips with is just how much consumers are now calling the shots. They have the ability to change the way ad messages are being received -- and even come out with their own counter-messages....

The blog creators are influencers -- people who pride themselves on knowing all kinds of arcane, insider details about the product, hence giving themselves credibility with consumers.

What's clear is that advertising no longer has the luxury of being a one-way monologue....

If blogs are liberating consumers, they are having an equal impact on voters. More and more people are turning to blogs for their take on political events of the day, and traditional journalism is taking the hit....

The journalistic bloggers bypass professional journalists. Will consumer blogs bypass professional advertising agencies? As I said, be careful what you wish for.

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When will they ever learn

: Two dumbest ideas I've heard in ages:

1. Howard Dean heading the DNC. Thus guaranteeing the Democrats life as an opposition party of the fringe.

2. John Kerry running again. You lost, Kerry. You lost. You blew it. Give it up.

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The future of media

: Corante kicks off a series of interviews on the future of media. In the first, Ernie Miller asks questions of ... me.

[Oh, no, not more blathering from that guy, you say. Sorry but yes: More blathering. Ernie asks good questions, I give bad answers and take a lot of bits doing it.]

It begins: "The means of media are now in the hands of the people."

Each Q&A is set apart with an opportunity to leave comments. So please, go argue with me. Tell me how I'm full o' crap. Tell me what I missed. Say it better than I say it. Discuss among yourselves.....

: UPDATE: Jay Rosen replies:

The problem with Big Media is that it learned how to "store" trust--in brand, reputation and ritual--and so forgot what it was. But the blogger has to make trust, from scratch as it were. So the blogger winds up knowing more about the current conditions for trust capture

Separately, Henry Copeland sent this email responding to Nick Denton's contention, below, that blogs are just websites:

Websites usually aren't written by humans, blogs usually are. Websites usually don't link to other websites, blogs usually do. So "blogs" are both less (corporate) and more (networked) than "websites." Twine these two characteristics together and blogs ARE radically new relative to other media.

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Forget red vs. blue states -- it's urban vs. ex

: Staring at more molecular red vs. blue maps, it became obvious:

This isn't about state vs. state. This is about urban vs. everybody else. Urban is blue, everybody else is red.

But it's more than politics. It's about culture and pride and judgment and snot.

I was thinking this as I took my intolerable commute this morning: Two hours and 15 friggin' minutes -- with no visible accidents or rational explanations for the traffic jams -- to get from my house to the Hellish Hilton in New York for the Ad:Tech conference. And I'm asking myself, "Is this worth it?" and, "Is this anyway to live?" and, "How come I have to do this?" Well, because it's New York, of course, center of the universe.

The New Yorkers I know treat the fact that I live halfway to Cleveland as something they don't talk about out of deference to me. It's like Martha Stewart's friends not mentioning jail or felonies or stock or crab apples around her. I live in the 'burbs -- the suburbs, the exurbs, somewhere out there. But they like me anyway.

And this, I saw, was the real divide in America. Most of America lives in the suburbs now, but we don't talk about that, we don't admit that. We in the media elite still act as if they're going to go away: Levittown will crumble. We act as if cities are still the center of the action in America and as if farms are what's left. No, most Americans are suburbanites today. And proud of it. Almost.

I will admit that I never thought I'd live in the 'burbs. In fact, I wrote that in an email to a long-long-lost friend just the other day, as in: Imagine that, me, in the 'burbs. We grew up in them and thought we'd never return. Go figger.

But here I am and I like the 'burbs. I have land and trees around me and convenience and places to park my car and good schools and quiet and stores and malls and a big house, nya, nya, nya.

Do I sound defensive? Sure. I'm a suburbanite.

When the majority of the country who voted for Bush talk about being demeaned it's not really about religion (we're not a nation of Bible-thumpers), it's about being from the boonies. The city slickers look down their noses at us 'burbans. They don't venture out here. They act as if it's a wasteland when it's our home. They are out of touch with the majority of America. The cultural reality yields the political reality.

And on the train -- the third train I take after a long drive -- I read David Brooks' column, one of his good ones, about just this:

Ninety percent of the office space built in America in the 1990's was built in suburbia, usually in low office parks along the interstates. Now you have a tribe of people who not only don't work in cities, they don't commute to cities or go to the movies in cities or have any contact with urban life. You have these huge, sprawling communities with no center....

Movies from "The Graduate" to "American Beauty" have reinforced the idea that the suburbs are bland, materialistic, ticky-tacky boxes in a hillside where people are conformist on the outside and hollow within. The stereotype is absurd, but it closes off fresh thinking....

On the one hand, people move to exurbs because they want some order in their lives. They leave places with arduous commutes, backbreaking mortgages, broken families and stressed social structures and they head for towns with ample living space, intact families, child-friendly public culture and intensely enforced social equality. That's bourgeois.

On the other hand, they are taking a daring leap into the unknown, moving to towns that have barely been built, working often in high-tech office parks doing pioneering work in biotech and nanotechnology. These exurbs are conservative but also utopian - Mayberrys with BlackBerrys.

The Republicans won in part because Bush and Rove understand this culture. Everybody is giving advice to Democrats these days, and mine is don't take any advice from anybody with access to the media - including me, just to be safe.

Get out into the sprawl, into that other conversation. Take your time. It's a new world out there.

There's still a touch of snoot in even this sympathetic piece, as if the 'burbs are still a strange place rather than the true center of the action and culture and politics in America. Nonetheless, Brooks is right.

And I ended my day hearing an unnamed major media executive (unnamed because it was at an off-the-record event) talking about this very same phenom: Big media isn't so much liberal as urban, he said; there's a different world view and the election revealed that. New Orleans went for Kerry; Louisiana went for Bush; St. Louis went for Kerry; Missouri went for Bush; urban vs. ex.

The best thing the Democrats can do is move out to the 'burbs. You'll survive, believe me. I did.

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The NY Times vlogs

: Yesterday, I said Martin Nisenholtz of NYTimes.com recommended videos by tech writer David Pogue. He's right: They're damned good and they show what video online can be. He gives us quick, witty, informative reports on the new Palm or Google's desktop search. Being on video adds personality and lightens these potentially dully topics. Go to this page and look for the links to Pogue's reports down on the right.

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The state of media

: This week, I'm seeing the state of media from many different perspectives:

From the top of the heap, I've been at the Foursquare conference, which is packed with the heads of damned near every major media business in the country. It's off-the-record and so I can't blog what I hear, but I will blog about what it inspires.

From the front line of turning online into a business, I've been at the Ad:Tech conference, where I've heard advertisers, agencies, online publishers, and the odd blogger in the crowd about following the money.

And Wednesday night I head to a very grassroots session about changing media from the bottom up.

If I have any brain left, I'll blog about conclusions from all this on the train ride back from D.C. at the end of the week....

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