BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis

February 28, 2005

To the barricades, bloggers -- yet again

: The Global Voices blog reports that Jeff Ooi, the pioneering (and charming) Maylasian blogger, was taken in for questioning regarding a blog post. This is the dark side of blogs getting attention in the wrong countries.

Blogcast

: I'm scheduled to do two blogcasts from Buzzmachine World Headquarters on MSNBC's Connected between 5 and 6p ET -- one on winds of change in the Middle East as soon through blogs there, the other a blog round-up, including the Oscars.

Here are the links I talked about (since some didn't show up on the screen and I blew a few). My notes for the segments:

Egypt: Links here.

Lebanon:

This is moving fast and we're seeing comment and coverage from Lebanon. This is being called the "Cedar Revolution" (after the velvet and orange revolutions).

Across the Bay says:
"The popular pressure has managed to topple a cabinet without a single act of violence or bloodshed. It's a proud moment for the Lebanese people."
beirut2bayside.blogspot.com/

Cave Man in Beirut says:
"The government has fallen. And now the fun begins."
blissstreetjournal.blogspot.com/

bahrain1.jpgBahrain: Links here.

(Note the new pictures up at Chan'ad Bahraini; these are brave souls.)

Hillary Clinton:

Daniel Owen at Oval Office 2008 says:
Joe Biden... says of Hillary, "she is ... the elephant in the living room. She's the big deal." "I don't know how you beat her for the Democratic nomination," added former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, "she's a rock star."
www.ovaloffice2008.com

Oscars left and right:

Even the reviews of the show are turning into a red-state-v.-blue-state shtick.

Jeralyn Meritt at TalkLeft.com complaints that Robin Williams efforts to sing a song making fun of censorship was censored so much that he had to kill it.

But over at the conservative blogs....

LaShawn Barber at complains:
"What happened to class and civility? Chris Rock said, “Sit your a**** down!” And people laughed?"

At least they had something to laugh about!

Who's afraid of the big, bad blogger

: Marketwatch's Jon Friedman writes today that he's afraid of bloggers. Not shivering in his boots but fearful nonetheless about all the usual qualms: are we journalists, are we trustworthy, etc., etc.

Let me try to put your mind at ease, Jon. Stop thinking of us as bloggers. Think of us as plain people -- readers, men-on-the-street, sources -- who happen to blog. That's all we really are: the people. And the people know stuff. So it's good you now have a way to find out what we know. If you use it wisely, it will improve your reporting because you'll know more and then your readers will know more and then we'll all hug and light our Bics and sing.

By the way, for anyone coming here from Jon's column, there's an error in it: It says that Bill Keller of The Times has asked his editors to get together with bloggers to talk about all this. I'm the one who asked that, not Bill. But you can read our email exchange here.

To the barricades, bloggers (again)

: Middle-Eastern regimes are discovering blogs... and jailing bloggers. Two are in jail in Iran (and one is in exile). Now a Bahraini blogger has been arrested for what he wrote on his blog. His "crimes:"

1. Defaming the royalty
2. Inciting hatred towards the regime
3. Publishing news to destabilize security ("تزعزع الأمن")
4. Violating the Press Laws
5. Violating the Communication Laws
Much more on the case here. The arrested blogger's site is here.

The Oscars we didn't see

: Chris Rock acted like he was visiting his grandmother. He couldn't be him. He had to worry about obnoxious prigs like Sean Penn giving him crap for a Jude Law joke. Jeesh.

: On Howard this morning, Artie Lang said a pal of his wrote a joke for Rock that Rock was too nervous to use. The introduction of Halle Berry he should have made: "Our next presenter has lost more men than the Iraqi army."

: And getaloada of the fracas over the producers' efforts to edit a ditty that Robin Williams was going to sing [via TalkLeft]:

Overnight, Mr. Shaiman and his partner, Scott Wittman, dashed off a mock exposé of the dark underbelly of cartoonland for Mr. Williams to deliver, over a gospel-music groove, as if he were a full-throated preacher inveighing against other newly-discovered sinners in the nation's midst:

"Pinocchio's had his nose done! Sleeping Beauty is popping pills!/ The Three Little Pigs ain't kosher! Betty Boop works Beverly Hills!"

The producer of the Oscars telecast, Gil Cates, urged Mr. Shaiman to make the bit "less political," Mr. Shaiman said, so he quickly removed any reference to Mr. Dobson's protests - and turned Mr. Williams into a fabulous, lisping character dishing up the latest juicy gossip:

"Fred Flintstone is dyslexic, Jessica Rabbit is really a man, Olive Oyl is really anorexic, and Casper is in the Ku Klux Klan!"

Officials from ABC's broadcast standards and practices office were not pleased. On Thursday, they detailed their objections.

Some lines were opposed for "sexual tone," as the ABC officials, Susan Futterman and Olivia Cohen Cutler, put it to Mr. Williams, Mr. Shaiman and Mr. Cates. These lines included "Chip 'n Dale are both strippers," "Bugs Bunny's a sexaholic," and "Josie and the Pussycats dance on laps."

In the end, however, the sexual references would have been allowed, a network spokesman said. But they held the line on material that they believed might be seen as glorifying drug use or offending Native Americans or disabled people.

Among other lines, they included "The Road Runner's hooked on speed" and "Pocahontas is addicted to craps."

On Friday, faced with rewriting or killing as many as 11 lines out of a 36-line piece, Mr. Shaiman said, he and Mr. Wittman refused, and Mr. Williams had to look for new material.

Don't you feel safer now?

I know people say this every year but these really were the dullest Oscars I've ever seen.

Welcome to broadcast in the '00s: Tapioca.

Yes, she's excited about journalism

: More than a year ago, the teen Iranian-American blogger at Blue Bird Escape returned to her homeland and wrote about it in her blog in a series of truly remarkable posts that showed without varnish her reaction to the life of women -- the life that would have been hers -- in Iran. I linked to her frequently then for I was wowed by her talent, insight, and honesty. When her brother, an Iranian journalist, came to the U.S. on vacation from Europe, he arranged for us to meet: him, his blogging sister, and their parents, for a delightful lunch. I said then that I hoped she would chose to write; there's no doubt she has the voice.

Today, I wandered back to her blog and found this:

USA Today is an amazing place. It's where everything happens, the news you see on television happens right in front of you. Our journalism staff got to visit it today, including me. I can't explain the rush of excitement I felt as I walked around. Looking at reporters' desks that were piled up with paper and their computers ready for their stories made me want to sit and start working right away. I've had the dream of being a journalist for a long time. It just sounds like such an exciting and thrilling job. I feel like I've accomplished something just by knowing what I want to be.
It makes me happy that she's considering writing. It also makes me happy that such a smart and talented young person is considering journalism, is excited about journalism. At a time when we ink-pixel-stained wretches are getting considerable grief on both content and business sides, it's a relief to see that the future of the trade will be in good hands. And her advantage: By the time she gets into the business, she'll already have been writing for a public for years.

What's really changing the news biz

: Citizens' media isn't changing the news business nearly as much as business is changing the news business.

Craig Newmark of Craigslist has been touting the potential of local citizens' media -- as do I -- and he has been taunting us with hints of content plans -- I can't wait to hear what's on his mind. But it seems he has felt a twinge of caution about this as he said:

Hey, there's a lot of furor now around the emerging area of citizens' journalism, where ordinary citizens complement the work of professionals and maybe go beyond.

That's a big topic, best discussed elsewhere.

I just want to remind everyone that people's jobs are involved, writers, editors, delivery people, PR people, and more.

When an industry goes through a major shift, sometimes people lose jobs.

I don't have anything smart to suggest, except that news professionals starting looking hard at the blogging phenomenon, and try to get ready.

But Craig himself is having more impact on jobs in the news business than any blog phenom. I've said this to him over dinner.

In one oft-quoted study, CraigsList eliminated $65 million in newspaper classified revenue in one market alone: San Francisco. He didn't shift it from the papers to his pocket. He destroyed it, burned it up -- gone -- as consumers got a new deal. I say that with no judgment: Let the market decide. And, in fact, I've also said -- and said to Craig -- that I believe he and Monster and company are only waystations to a different future, a distributed future when these buyers and sellers won't need to come to a centralized marketplace but, instead, will sit out there, anywhere, on the internet waiting to be found by some specialized successors to Google that put them together (with, perhaps, no revenue at all). See this chart on Craigslist showing pageviews of the major job sites and know that there's another colored line -- called distributed -- that hasn't even shown up yet.

craiggraph.png

Now add to this the factors we know: declining print circulation... increasing competition from the internet and from new, free print products... declining viewership of network news...

I gave my blogboy presentation to a bunch of strategic guys at a certain major mass media company (not my employer's) the other day and said that the mass market was dead, to be replaced by the mass of niches, and the young MBAs in the room screeched as if I'd goosed them. Fine, I said, imagine that things won't change and others will come along and eat you up bit by bit. You'll still be there, but you'll have new competitors and your growth will be gone.

The business of news is changing and anyone with an ounce of sense knows that. And many in the business fret about how we are going to be able to support quality journalism; it's a real worry.

But -- now, at long last, here's my point -- citizens' media and other innovations may not be the threat but one of the solutions:

1. You've heard me say before that citizens' media may be a new source of news, information, and viewpoints that established media cannot afford to gather on their own. That's the idea behind hyperlocal citizens' media. And the hope behind it is that it opens up a new opportunities to attrack new audiences and advertisers. This doesn't replace existing jobs; it expands existing coverage and, if it works, helps support existing operations -- though that's all still quite unproven.

2. Online provides a means of diversification for big media. That's what the Marketwatch deal meant for Dow Jones: a way to get more ad-supported traffic and less-expensive content and audience. That's what the About.com deal means for The New York Times: a way to get search and cost-per-click advertising that is going, instead, to Google now and a way to expand into distributed networks of niche content. If these deals work, they, too, help support existing operations.

3. Citizens' media and online tools show the way to much, much cheaper content creation. Note my silly blogcasts for MSNBC last week: a $100 camera and a $40/month internet connection and I was broadcasting to the world. Video, audio, and text tools show how to create content at a far lower cost. This does, indeed, affect jobs -- but restructuring has come to every other industry, why not content? If we put less money into commodity content and into production hoo-has that don't really matter, then we can maintain budgets to build unique and valuable content.

At the same time, all the new competitors of online do what new competion always does: wake up the old, established players and enliven the good ones and kill the bad ones. That, too is good.

The news business is unquestionably changing. But it's not necessarily for the worse. There are more news outlets; I believe that in aggregate, people will consume news more; and there are new efficiencies and new opportunities. It may not be an easy road to get there, that's all.

February 27, 2005

White House, editor

: Now this is funny. From Newsweek via Lost Remote:

When President Bush confronted President Putin about freedom of the press in Russian, Putin responded, "We didn't criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS."
Oh, I'm sure Bush was thinking, if only he could fire a few.

An editor-in-chief

: Former Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Henry Grunwald died this weekend. I respected Henry, because one had to. But I came up against him more than once.

He rejected my proposal for Entertainment Weekly because, in his view, one magazine could not possibly serve people who read and people who watch TV because people who watch TV do not read. Considering that everyone watches TV, he apparently did not see much of a future for reading.

Just as soon as I become TV critic of People, I gave a rave review to Concealed Enemies, a PBS miniseries about Whitaker Chambers vs. Alger Hiss. I've told this story before: I said that I liked the mini and also mentioned that it portrayed Chambers as a fat wimp. One of the old-timers at People said there'd be trouble to pay, for Chambers was Grunwald's mentor. "Henry lived under Whittaker's desk," the old pro said. I shrugged. But sure enough, my review came back from the 34th floor with the scribblings of Jason McManus -- then No. 2 to Henry -- utterly rewriting my review. They turned it into a negative review, making incredible changes. I went to my boss, Pat Ryan, managing editor of People, and said I could not allow this to appear under my byline. Bless her, she stood by me. She sent an edit back up with all the worst of the distortions taken out. We waited by the phone. It rang and Pat said she was going to lose either her critic or her job; she was prepared for the latter. But Henry was out at some social event, so the deadline passeed and the review went in. Jason the next day said there'd be hell to pay. But Henry, to his credit, knew he had gone overboard and allowed his personal history to influence his editing. "He came as close as he ever will to apologizing," Pat reported to me. That was the end of it. I kept my job and so did Pat.

When Henry retired, Jason took his place and he green-lighted EW. He still had no spine, wimping out when my magazine dared to give entertainment negative reviews just as his journalistic company was merging with an entertainment company.

Henry was a formidable, albeit short, presence. He used to hold occasional cocktail parties (those were the days, my friend) to get to know editorial staffers and I remember when one colleague at People was invited and had to borrow another colleagues shoes and socks.

Henry Grunwald was one of the last of the scary editors. The New York Times had its share, but they're gone, too (a cup of coffee with the current editor sounds like fun). Ditto the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune and The New Yorker. Now big-time editors are as often scared as scary.

Egyptian bloggers

: I was curious what Egyptian bloggers were saying about Mubarek's decision, under pressure, to allow multiple-candidate election. On an Egyptian blogring, I found Big Pharaoh, who says:

Now, I am not stupid nor am I living in la la land. Mubarak's decision today came after immense pressure from the US and the current earthquakes (the purple revolution in Iraq and the Hariri revolution in Lebanon) that shook the region days ago. However, I credit US pressure as the number one reason. Condoleezza Rice cancelled a trip to Egypt scheduled for next week because of the arrest of Ayman Nour and Mubarak's failure to "change". Well, it seems that Bush turned out to be bloody serious about this democracy in the Middle East thing. It also seems that Bushie will in fact make it to the history books that my grandchildren will be reading at school 50 years from today. If Syria or Iran fell, Bush can rest assured that he will add his name to the Lincoln-Wilson-Roosevelt-Reagan quartet.

Well, what do I think about all this? I mentioned before that I didn't want Egypt to rush to the ballot box. I wanted Mubarak to be pressured to open up the civil society of Egypt so that alternatives to his rule start to pop up. We simply do not know better and we needed time in order to see the alternatives and decide who is better.

Unless I am 100% sure that one of the candidates who will compete with Mubarak will be better than him, I'll probably vote for Mubarak next October whom I believe will win because of the resources he has as the country's sole authority.

The Egyptian paradox.

One Pissed Arab says:

Now Mubarak is simply under too much external pressure (the wet cat in his lap) from the United Bush of America to get his act together and fast, and there was no avoiding it. After all if Mubarak is really giving in to the demands of "his people" then he must have just replaced the batteries in his hearing aid. The public have been screaming for reform, and the opposition only grew recent ballz when they felt the external pressure.

So I am not digesting any of it because it looks like another scene in the same redicioulous play that we have all watched 4 times before, Mubarak gets to win this election too, and whoever succeeds George Bush, will be left to deal with it.

The Arabist Network says:
Now for the politics of it. People are interpreting this very differently on the ground here in Cairo. The official opposition seems to have embraced it unequivocally, often praising Mubarak in the process. The reaction from activists from movement such as Kefaya seem to be saying that a) it’s not enough and b) reject that it comes from American pressure. Political scientists such Al Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies Director Abdel Moneim Said, who is close to Gamal Mubarak and the ruling National Democratic Party, say it was planned all along as part of the NDP’s new platform (if so, they never mentioned anything about it.) Independent political analysts are being cautious, welcoming the step but saying that it will take more than constitutional reform to make Egypt democratic. They are also suspicious of the restrictions on independent candidates. I haven’t heard of any reaction from the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Akef. Pro-American liberals say it’s all thanks to Bush and the cancellation of Condoleeza Rice’s trip.
The Egypt Blog says: "Don't get fooled." He says it's playacting.

The politics of immaturity

: Oliver Willis goes beyond his one-line posts and tries to explain why he resorts to calling me and others "stupid" if we dare to disagree with him.

But what he really does is reveal the thinking of his camp -- the Koses, Altermans, Olivers, and Deaniacs who think they have taken over the Democratic Party.

They operate on schoolyard rules:
: 'If I don't like your game, I'll take my ball and go home.' (See 'one-man circle jerk.' Clever product placement here.)
Or to promote them a few years, they operate on junior-high clique rules:
: 'If you talk to them then you can't be my friend.'
It's all about trying to create an exclusive club. It's all about exclusion.

They measure people on whether they (a) agree totally with them and (b) attack the other side with the same vitriol as they do and (c) dare to ever think of criticizing our side.

This is the politics of immaturity.

This is when Oliver most reveals himself:

"Jeff believes that there's room for the two parties to work together. On what planet?"

On this planet, Oliver. If you don't try to work with the other party, you won't ever get any legislation passed: simple rule of civics class, simple lesson of life, basic lesson of the Clinton years (he co-opted their issues to become the master of his domain: no, not that domain, I mean the center).

And if you demonize the other party and, more important, anybody who ever agrees with any stance they have, then you will never -- never -- win an election. Oh, you'll have a tight little clique -- until it's so tight it's just one person in a room in a... well, I won't say what that one person is doing.

Finally, if you keep thinking that the other party is the enemy, you lose sight of the real enemy, an enemy I have seen first-hand. We have met the enemy, Oliver, and it's not us.

You see, Oliver, when I grew up in politics, we did fight our own party to make it better. Hell, we rioted in the streets of Chicago against our own party. I didn't do that (couldn't skip high school, you know), but I did demonstrate at a precocious age against the party's president, Lyndon Johnson, and we knocked him out. The Democratic party has a proud history of struggle within to improve itself. If you give that up, then you act not like a politician but a propagandist, selling only the party line that comes from above. What did your precious Howard Dean do in the election but criticize the party and try to make it over and take it over (and, indeed, he took it over)? He can criticize the party and I can't? Where's the logic there, Oliver? Where's the fairness? Where's the democracy in the Democratic Party, then?

Here are some other Oliver moments: "This would be an ideal situation, if the goal of the Republican party wasn't the elimination of the Democratic party."

What, and it's not your goal to eliminate the Republican Party? Besides, the way the Democrats are going right now, they're doing a fine job of destroying themselves by losing elections -- and I don't just mean the White House -- and alienating fellow Democrats like me and fence-sitting Republicans with your kind of venemous orthodoxy and insult.

And: "The reason Jeff raises such ire on the left is that he's a reliable source for the right in getting a Democrat to bash Democrats. A similar dynamic exists with Mickey Kaus, The New Republic, and Joe Lieberman."

Thanks, Oliver. I'd say that's good company. I disagree with them on many issues, but I do respect them because they have a mature and sensible view of politics and responsibility and the nation.

And: "I will always believe that the legacy of the George W. Bush years is one in which he and his party decided to simply defecate on half of the populace."

And what are you doing, Oliver? You're not only pissing on Republicans, you're pissing on Democrats you don't like. You're pissing on more than half of the country. In your game, you win. (But in the game that matters, you lose.)

And: "It is actually in large part the folks within the Democratic Party who think like Jeff who lost the last election for us."

Uh, well, Dean couldn't even win Iowa; he certainly couldn't have won the presidency.

And: "Jarvis says he likes and would vote for Hillary Clinton. Does he know how much his new buddies hate her?"

Your point? These Republicans aren't my "buddies," Oliver. But they're not my enemies just because we disagree. Neither are you, Oliver. You're the one drawing that line.

Go ahead and read the whole thing yourself, for obviously, I'm just picking out the bits that amuse me. But there you see the thinking of the people who call anyone who disagrees with them "right-wing." It's quite revealing.

: MORE: Dan Weinberger says in reply: "And the bottom line is, your post would have resonated with many more Dems had you given similar advice to the Republicans." And I reply: I'm not a Republican, so I'm not trying to give them advice and help them win. I already know I disagree with the Republicans. That's why I'm a Democrat. That's why I want to see the Democrats do better and actually win an election....

Disappearing America

: Terry Teachout says that 11 years ago he read Going, Going, Gone: Vanishing Americana about the obsolete of postwar America. He's calling for an updated version, for among the thing he no longer uses are:

• Ketchup in glass bottles.
• Newspapers and magazines on paper. I can’t remember the last time I read one (except for a couple of the magazines for which I write). If I can’t read it on line, I don’t read it.
• Fax machines. I have one, but I rarely use it more than twice a month, both ways.
• Going to the post office to mail packages. I use FedEx and UPS almost exclusively.
• Black discs and cassettes. I got rid of the remnants of my collection when I moved to this apartment two years ago. I no longer own a turntable or a cassette deck.
• TV commercials. I now watch all TV programs after the fact (having previously recorded them on my DVR), meaning that I only see commercials as they whiz by silently and at very high speed.
• Typewriters. I disposed of my last one ten years ago. The only thing I miss about it is not having to address envelopes by hand....
• Floppy disks. I back up my computer on line every night.
• “Water-cooler” TV shows. The last TV series to be viewed on a regular basis by more than a handful of my friends was The Sopranos....
And I'll add:
: Stick shifts.
: Corded phones.
: Videotape.
: Christmas cards.
: Ice-cube trays.
: Car cassette players.
: Knobs on public washroom sinks.
: Bar soap.
: Aerosol cans.
: Downtowns.
: Local hardware stores.
: Polyester.
: Modems.
What else?

: Mark Tosczak adds:

:Water from the tap that hasn't been filtered.
:Phone books
:Bank tellers (well, almost never)
:411
:Cameras that use film
:Video cameras that use VHS tapes
:Pay phones, phone cards, hotel phones (my cel phone does it all, nationwide)
:Traveler's checks
And how could I forget
: Print TV guides.
: (Soon) printed airline tickets.
: Human beings answering the customer-service line.
What else?

Free Muslims Against Terrorism

: I hadn't heard of Free Muslims Against Terrorism until I read a link on Relapsed Catholic to this from one of the group's leaders, Kamal Nawash:

Only moderate Muslims can challenge and defeat extremist Muslims. We can no longer afford to be silent. If we remain silent to the extremism within our community, then we should not expect anyone to listen to us when we complain of stereotyping and discrimination by non-Muslims. We should not be surprised when the world treats all of us as terrorists. And we should not be surprised when we are profiled at airports.

Simply put, not only do Muslims need to join the war against extremism and terror, we need to take the lead in this war.

I've been waiting a long time to hear that.

Maher time

: Watched Maher last night. Tim Robbins looked chronically confused. Tucker Carlson said that spreading democracy is not cause for sending our soldiers into war. Robbins said Iraq now has a president who won't shake hands with women. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones said she respects that Muslim choice. Maher and Carlson both said, "You've got to be kidding."

It's a damned Cirque du Soleil of politics. It's the Blue Man Group of the blue states.

Maher said he doesn't agree with Ward Churchill but then turned around and said, "Is the United States guilty of a passive aggressive violence against the world? Yes."

At the end, Maher said they've been trying hard to get more conservatives in the audience so they don't all hoot at the same lines from the panel. But he said it's hard because conservatives don't like him.

February 26, 2005

Jealous

: David Galbraith gets a preview of Ev's Odeo Podcast service. Loves it.

Democracy spreads... to Egypt now

: Big news from Egypt: Hosni Mubarek is opening the first multicandidate (read: real) elections:

President Hosni Mubarak opened the door on Saturday to multi-candidate presidential polls in Egypt, a dramatic move welcomed by Washington and opposition groups as a step toward more open government.

Analysts described his televised announcement, heralding the first contested polls since the 1952 fall of the monarchy, as a response to both U.S. reform calls and an increasingly vocal domestic opposition, emboldened by Washington. Cairo is uneasy about U.S. campaigning for democratic change in the region....

State Department spokesman Steven Pike welcomed the development, which came a day after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice postponed a visit to Egypt.

Even Armando at Daily Kos graciously annoints this good news: "The Bush Administration will feel, and with some justification, a measure of satisfaction." He continues to ask Eeyore cautious questions about how good the election will be. Of course, there is much work ahead. American officials are officially cautious, as well they should be. (UPDATE: Poliblogger adds more cautions.) Hell, the most likely opponent was jailed (more here). Egypt is hardly enlightened overnight. But the pressure of the people and what's happening in the neighborhood and from America -- witness Condi's cancelled trip -- is being felt. It's a step.

Afghanistan.

Iraq.

Palestine.

Egypt.

Democracy is spreading. Democracy must spread.

: Haaretz, too, sees good news here:

Something "dangerous" is happening to public opinion in several Arab countries: It is beginning to chalk up more and more victories. Last week, the Lebanese public pushed Syria to announce its intention to withdraw from Lebanon. Last year, Saudi public opinion and American pressure generated a public discussion of human rights in the monarchy. And yesterday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak laid the foundation for Egypt's democratic revolution, no less.
: LATER: I at first called Aramando's questions Eeyore questions. That wasn't fair and I quickly changed it (but left the evidence). Give Armando full credit for giving even this administration credit for having something to do with this. And, yes, there's no reason to think that Mubarek is going to be holding election coffees. But it is good news.

: SUNDAY UPDATE: The punchline according to Global Octopus:

Of course, it has nothing to do with US policy. All the credit goes to Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan.

Blogging, blogging, everywhere...

: The ancient Observer of London is blogging.

Wingers, Fringers, and the rest of us

: There's a lot of interesting followup discussion to my post yesterday about close-, clubby liberals trying to lock out fellow liberals they don't like... like me.

They are trying to create a club that gets ever smaller as they reject more people who disagree with them about one of their fervently held beliefs or who don't hate the other side fervently enough to meet their standards. The club soon makes them and no one else happy.

They think the club is the Democratic Party. They think they took it over in the last election. In fact, they lost the last election for us.

It is time for more mature politicians -- see Bill Keller's definition of politiican here -- to take charge.

In the meantime, while the Wingers on one edge and the Fringers on the other edge spit and piss on each other, the rest of us -- most of us -- are left in the middle wondering where to turn.

See lots of discussion in the comments below. And see these posts from my PubSub egofeed, too. First from Fred Wilson a card-carrying (and checkbook-carrying and megaphone-carrying) liberal. He says that he and I disagreed only about the Iraq war; he affirms my liberal credentials and then says:

The war in Iraq needs to be buried in the past. It's over as a politcal issue. The left lost that one. There are bigger battles to fight like fiscal responsibility, a sound social security system, a woman's right to choose, etc. That's where my left leaning politics are strongest and its where the majority of the country agrees with the Democrats.

I wrote several weeks ago that the left needs to focus on Social Pragmatism and Fiscal Conservatism. That's a winning proposition. Opposition to the war in Iraq is not.

: Scared Monkeys says:
This is the death nell for the Democrats. The Kos wing has taken over the party and they will turn the Jarvis’s, the thinking Democrats into Republican voters. There is only room in the inn for the fire breathing, hate anything Bush, democrats in the party. It is a shame.

I am a Republican. I was overjoyed that GWB won, but I am very scared. The nature of politics is that sometime the party in power will screw up. Then the other party, no matter how wacky, gets it turn (see Jimmy Carter).

Do we want the modern incarnation of the Democratic Party of Hatred to have the power? Please, Please Moderate Democrats fight for your party. Otherwise, when power does shift, we are going to have one heck of a mess on our hands.

And Jeff, I am a huge fan of yours , and appreciate all that you do. A year ago, I offered a place in the republican party to you. I recind that offer. Please get your party back in order. Help them to see that they are needed to be logical. Not oppressive.

Linkdump says:
Personally I like to sit in the political middle and veer wildly back and forth because I think it’s the only sensible thing to do. I also think we need to round up the folks on both fringes and put em in a to-the-death pay-per-view cage match with survivors being exiled to a 20 ft diameter desert island with one palm tree.
: Pennywit says:
A whole passel of us sit near the center of the electoral continuum.

We don't show up for party meetings. We don't salute the political messiah of the moment. Some of us arent' very loud, either. We may consider ourselves political spectators. But we vote. We talk to our friends about politics. Our loved ones learn of our disenchantment with one party or another.

And in a nation split as evenly as it is, our votes can decide the next election. So if we agree with you in general but disagree on particulars, you would be well-advised not to excommunicate us ... as I'm sure many of us could make peace with ourselves and reach an accommodation with the other party.

: Jason Van Steenwyk says:
The bottom line: The left's turning on and betrayal of Jarvis demonstrates how out of touch with the country they have become. Dean will be an electoral disaster for the Democratic party. Their election of Dean to the DNC chair position demonstrates at once a failure to learn from any of the mistakes of the McAuliffe era -- mistakes that have caused the Democratic party to lose ground and credibility over a full decade -- and a touching devotion to maintaining their status as a minority party.
: And saving the best for last, Sean Bonner says:
There's a lyric by an old hardline band that says "There's only two sides and a line that divides, if you stand in the middle you're not on my side." And that's pretty much the way the fringe on both sides of this political rock fight sees things. If you don't agree with them 100% then you are the enemy. Agreeing with them 90% is the same as disagreeing with them 100%. It's completely retarded, especially since most people, the ones who probably have the numbers and pull to make a change fall somewhere in the middle. Yet all we ever heard from is the fringe. It's almost as if taking about the things you agree with isn't interesting and not worth the coverage - the only thing work talking about is who you don't agree with. As if your enemies define you more than your friends. I think that's completely stupid.
: When people say that weblogs are all about the edges, I'll show them this.

Milk carton TV

: Watching the hours of TV devoted to the tragedy of the latest missing child in Florida is, well, uncomfortable. It is a good thing that TV is using its power to spread the word and, perhaps, help find the child; it has worked before. But once the word is spread, is it really necessary to eek out the angsts of the family -- and the suspicions of police and anchors -- at length, again and again? It's a sick sort of voyeurism, witnessing pain.

When I was a reporter on the midnight shift in Chicago -- where I sat and waited until somebody killed somebody or died a miserable death to write stories under our standing slugs: slash, crash, slay, burn -- I frequently had the unfortunate duty of calling the family of a victim of some sort of terrible crime or accident to get grist for our mill: human-interest quotes and pictures. I quickly learned the best line to use, the same one you hear on TV: Please tell us about your loved one, tell us more than just the name and the cold details that will appear in the paper. We're acting as if we and the audience are concerned. And maybe we are. But it's still an intrusion.

How much do we need to know about these horrible missing-children cases? What is the best way to serve? I think we could exchanges long, painful, salt-in-wound interviews with distraught relatives in front of their humble homes for more-frequent alerts.

February 25, 2005

Derail the spammers

: My son and webmaster tells me that the new Wordpress has one of those deals that require you to enter five digits in an image so you can post a comment -- thus derailing the comment spammers. Wish I could have that.

He's baaaack

: Jeff Gannon/Guckert has a blog that announces:

I'm baaaaaaack! If you thought I was going to slink away - then you don't know much about me. Someone still has to battle the Left and now that I've emerged from the crucible, I'm stronger than before.
Surely all sides can agree on one thing: The guy is a twit.

: LATER: ChiCon, a conservative Rutgers blogger, says: "Jeff Jarvis may say he's a twit, but he's our twit. So good luck, Jeff Gannon."

How (not) to win friends and influence voters

: The obnoxious self-inflicted orthodoxy of some on the left is hurting the cause and the party and any chance of getting elected again.

Today over at Kos, Armando calls me a "right-wing media gadfly." Commenters then pile on, as is their sport, and say that because New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller has been hanging around me, he must be right-wing, too. What liberal media, indeed. And then my bete taupe, Eric Alterman, uses his column in The Nation to call me "a self-styled evangelist for right-wing bloggers." And when I say that we're all journalists now thanks to the internet, he says: "That, of course, is nonsense. Journalists aspire to standards of fairness, accuracy and research that are not generally observed by Jarvis's pajama-clad army." These are standards not generally observed by Alterman in his spreading of innuendo not backed by the slightest reporting or fact. But I digress.

What does my right-wing look like?
: I voted for John Kerry, though reluctantly.
: I voted for Bill Clinton, eagerly.
: I am dying to vote for Hillary Clinton.
: I vote Democratic in local races in my corner of New Jersey, when they have the guts to run.
: I am pro-choice.
: I opposed the Bush tax cuts.
: I am against school vouchers.
: I am for gay marriage and quit the Presbyterian Church over its bigotry against gays.
: I am for universal health care.
: I fight for free speech in America and elsewhere.
: I wrote a cover story for The Nation.

So why do these guys want to drum me out of their corps (or what they think is their corps)? What are my crimes of political incorrectness?
: I didn't support Howard Dean.
: I supported the war in Iraq on the humanitarian grounds that we had a duty to finish the job of removing a tyrant who had murdered millions and bring democracy to an oppressed people. I call that a liberal, humanitarian, nation-building cause. These guys don't.
: I didn't support Howard Dean.
: I dared to criticize Koz for attacking Americans who were murdered in Iraq and dared to repeat Zephyr Teachout's recollections about the Dean campaign trying to curry favor with Kos via a job.
: I didn't support Howard Dean.
: I choose to be civil to bloggers who would call themselves conservative and though we disagree they are usually civil to me.
: I didn't support Howard Dean.
: I do support the notion that we need to bring democracy to the world and that without it, terrorism will continue.
: I didn't support Howard Dean.

And for these sins, Kos calls me right-wing, Alterman calls me all kinds of things, and Oliver Willis rises to the rhetorical heights of calling me, as he calls anyone with whom he disagrees, "stupid."

Is this the left, the caring, human, open, inclusive, warm, huggy, humanisitic left? Or is this just its wackier, ruder wing of the party? I vote for the latter.

But this is how liberals treat our own if we don't agree with ever syllable certain folks proclaim or if we don't seethe and spit at the other side.

This is no way to win elections and no way to enact change and no way to influence policy. If this wing continues to be the loudest voice of the party and, in fact, takes over the party, then you can bet that the Democrats will forever be in opposition -- a role these folks love like cultists who feed on attack -- or, worse, even sink into extinction. I'm not a third-party guy; never have been, never want to be. But being attacked for daring to disagree on one issue or with one self-proclaimed leader is no way to win friends and influence elections. I hope the Clinton wing retakes the party from the spitting fringe.

I'm no right-winger. But I'm not their kind of left-winger. I'm proud to sit in the center with most of America, in a country that isn't at war, red v. blue, but is getting sick of the fringers who are.

Real webcasting history

: Forget about all my MSNBC games. The big wecasting event today is the start of the King of All Blacks show. Howard Stern has been threatening to start a show with him on Sirius. That'll guarantee a million new subs, huh?

AP RSS

: Rafat Ali does good reporting on the AP's plans on RSS.

Next: A plague of flacks

: The Swiftreport wonders whether the reason LA is getting socked with 40 days and 40 nights of rain could be that God is pissed that The Passion didn't get an Oscar nomination...

Into orbit

: MediaWeek reports on a survey of Stern fans to find out how many are planning to make the switch. 22 percent said they are definitely getting Sirius; 41 percent were still deciding. If those numbers play out, the deal works well for Sirius and Stern. It was reported that Stern had to bring in 1 million subs to make the deal work. He has an audience reported at anywhere from 8 to 18 million; that's 1.7 to 4 million subs just for the 22 percent who are decided; add in some proportion of those who still thinking; add in Nascar fans, now that Sirius got that deal... and I'm glad I bought Sirius stock (with absolutely no insider knowledge!). I'll write a post soon on my reaction to having Sirius and my wish list for it. (Hat tip: Peter Weinberger)

: OOPS: I read an email on this and linked from there. Jimmy Robinson in the comments is my editor and catches me in a bad omission: The story goes further to say that a sizable hunk were not aware of the size of the fee (which is too much, I'd say) and that reduced the number considerably so, given the audience/fan numbers above, the net ends up either below or above 1 million. So they'll still have a lot of selling to do. Thanks, Jimmy. But I'm still not selling the stock.

Podcast, Inc.

: Now I can take the gag out of my mouth: Blogger cocreator Ev Williams, one of the handful of people who made blogging happen, is now moving his attention to Podcasting with a new company to enable people to create and find and play audio. He showed it at TED and The Times wrote it up today. When Ev showed me the plan a bit ago, I was jumping up and down on the couch: We need this kind of work to make the inventions of the pioneers -- Adam Curry, Dave Winer, et al -- ready for mere mortals and prime time. I'm also glad they're thinking advertising support from the start. And the possibilities are endless (think vlogs). Ev hitched up with Noah Glass, who started Audblogger, an idea whose time has now come. Here is Ev's post on how it happened. Here is Odeo.

Blogcam

: I'm scheduled to do the blogcam thing from Buzzmachine World Headquarters again today on MSNBC: 9:45a ET on the Pope (again) and in the 5p hour for Connected on blogs stuff (whew).

February 24, 2005

webcast1.jpg

Live! From upstairs! It's blog TV live!

webcast2.jpg: So the webcast from my den to MSNBC came off tonight. Trey Jackson put it up online (though, of course, MSNBC should do that).

Who needs a multimillion-dollar studio? What you see above is the blogcast studio: A Logitech laptop camera atop my screen; the screen atop a box to get it to eye-level; notes for the spiels taped to the screen; MSM Messenger to show the video; a phone to get the audio back; a very long ethernet cable to get to the router so we didn't rely on wireless; lots of lamps ... et voila: TV.

I was upstairs in the den broadcasting; the family was down in the family room, ridiculing. "It looked like you were lipsyncing," said my daughter. I tried to explain frame rates and backhaul but gave up and confessed that, indeed, Daddy is Milli Vanilli (which is better than being Ashlee Simpson).

This was supposed to be used for segments about blogging but, at the last minute, they canceled the entire show -- just as Bob Cox caught a train to New York -- and switched to Popevision. I had no time to find links but managed to survive three segments. And the topic didn't exactly fit with bloggy geeky fun. But as soon as I got off, the morning bookers called to do the same thing then. That's the wonder of TV: It is the medium made of memes.

What's neat about this is that anybody can broadcast from anywhere. Sure, the quality of the image is still iffy (but it's better than an Ollie North satphone call). But the possibilities are endless.

jarviskeller.jpg
Gawked

: It took no time for the email exchange between Bill Keller of The Times and me to become the butt of a Gawker post. I can't speak for Keller, but I somehow feel as if I have arrived. If only I could get them to stalk me.

: We got Wolcotted, too, though gently (or else Wolcott fears I'll pull the plug on his server).

Not since Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains strolled together into the backlot mist at the close of Casablanca has a more beautiful friendship been forged than that between Jeff Jarvis and NYT editor Bill Keller.... He should courteously ignore Jeff's advice that he contact more bloggers to address their concerns and snarky complaints--he starts that up, and he'll never get anything done. True, it would immunize him from blogworld accusations of being arrogant and aloof, like Howell Raines, but he's got plenty enough writers and whiners under his own roof to worry about without undertaking missionary work in the boiler rooms of comments sections....

Help! Papal blog posts needed!

: MSNBC just changed the show to do a full hour on the pope and I need any blog posts or sites about this. Please, please give me comments here.

: Watching MSNBC now I saw Dr. Joyce Brothers actually break down about it. Strange moment of TV.

Whither Wikinews

: Simon Waldman of The Guardian says WikiNews isn't very good.

Stern, Clear Channel settle

: Howard Stern and Clear Channel have settled; no word on details of the deal.

Broadcasting LIVE from Buzzmachine World Headquarters today!

: This is pretty damned cool if it works:

I'll be broadcasting on MSNBC's Connected via a webcam from my home today at 5p ET.

This is a neat moment in the merging of big media and citizens' media: Anybody can broadcast anywhere not only over the internet but also via big, old cables.

I'll be giving a blog report and then will be on a segment with Robert Cox of Media Bloggers and the National Debate and John Aravosis of AmericaBlog to talk about how bloggers are organizing themselves into a press.

Keller of The Times writes III

: The epistolary posting continues between Bill Keller of The Times and me and I'm glad it is, for I think we're honing in on the differences we may -- or may not -- have regarding this new media world of ours. I've created a category so you can read the previous exchanges; start from the bottom and work up. First, Bill Keller's email:

Jeff,

Before I get to your message, a brief but, I think, illustrative digression. In a talk Saturday to staff and alums of the Columbia daily paper, The Spectator, I mused a bit about some of the subjects you and I have been discussing. I made clear that I regard blogs as a valuable resource for journalists and an instructive source of criticism of our work. I also said that the blog world, as you would expect of a world with free admission, includes some real junk. My exact line was, "At its worst, a blog is a one-man circle jerk." Now, I could have said (and have said, in less public venues) pretty much the same thing and worse about certain writers and pundits in the mainstream media, but the subject of the moment was blogs. And it is probably a defensible view that self-indulgent writing and posturing are somewhat more prevalent in a medium that is diaristic in form and largely unfiltered. It could also be said that my phrase was a tasteless choice of metaphors for a person in my job speaking in the august (if acoustically challenged) venue of the Low Library. So be it. But that's what I said, and that's all it meant.

The interesting thing is that various versions of what I said have circulated in the blogosphere, mostly taking the remark as a wholesale slur of bloggers. I spent a little time this morning sampling the ardent points of view that have coalesced around what people imagine to be my view of bloggers based on their reading of a phrase pulled from a speech, or based on what they assume the editor of the NYT must think of them. Some of the comments make a point that I have frequently made myself -- that, heh heh, ain't it sweet for an editor at the NYT to be on the receiving end of coverage that distorts his views. (My only advice to Nick Lemann when he took over as dean of the Columbia Journalism School was that he should set up A-team and B-team senior seminars in which students write profiles of one another. No student should graduate without the experience of being written about.) But the thing about "the citizen's media," is that a distortion or a half-baked interpretation metastasizes in real time, and can quickly acquire the status of conventional wisdom. Even if you have lots of time on your hands, there is little hope of pursuing and correcting the misunderstanding as it scatters across the digital landscape. Maybe eventually something like an accurate version of events emerges organically from this process, but I rather doubt it, and in any case the process itself is a little like watching someone chew with his mouth open.

Watching this entirely minor episode unfold also confirms my concern that in this disaggregated media environment, people tend to gravitate toward information and opinion that confirms their own prejudices, toward zones of comfort and affinity. There are, of course, blogs where you encounter intelligent, provocative debate and reflection, and I value them, but it seems to be a world in which people quickly harvest the stuff that conforms to what they already believe, where there's a lot more pronouncing and cheerleading than listening and reflecting, and where the market has little tolerance for ambiguity and complexity. (If you have another sister who is a cheerleader, I apologize for any offense given.)

That's what I meant before about driving traffic toward the extremes. Just so I'm clear, this is a fear, not a conviction. I could be entirely wrong. Maybe the best blogs, the ones that cherish empirical evidence and struggle with nuance and prize intellectual honesty, will prevail in the great marketplace. Or maybe there will at least be robust (and sustainable) islands of serious discourse in the blogosphere -- like HBO in the television world or, forgive me, The New York Times in the shrinking pool of serious print media.

I don't, by the way, believe this polarizing tendency began with blogs. The cockfight school of discourse has a long pedigree, and it began to crowd out serious journalism on TV, for instance, before blogs arose. CNN probably did more damage to our national civic conversation with "Crossfire" -- establishing the principle that a balanced discussion meant two ill-informed gasbags shouting epithets at one another -- than anything the blog world has yet accomplished. Jeff, you ignorant slut!

I share your distaste for one-size-fits-all journalism, and I don't think that's what the NYT provides. We may not carry every size and fashion, but in both the news pages and the opinion pages (those two pages per day with which, I keep reminding people, I have absolutely nothing to do) we carry a lot more than your average department store. And the proliferation of voices beyond what a newspaper manages to include is a good thing, a genuine virtue of blogs. It's not the variety of the blogosphere that worries me, it's the dynamic. In the blogosphere, people tend to choose sides and dig in their heels well before evidence can be tested or actual reflection can take place. At least, that's my impression.

Obviously if I thought blogs should be disdained or dismissed, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But I gotta go.

Best, Bill

And my response:
Bill,

I'll make some specific suggestions on how to deal with the particular blog situation you raise.

But first, I can't help but draw parallels between your citizens'-media moment and my major-media moments lately. I didn't intend to bring the specific complaints I've had about Times coverage of blogs into our enjoyable and edifying exchange. But since you raised a case of it's-news-because-it-happens-to-the-editor, I will do the same and hope you take it in that spirit. Besides, the parallels are too perfect to pass up.

First, there is the story that led to this exchange (bless its heart): In it, The Times quoted me as saying in relation to Eason Jordan, "I wish our goal were not taking off heads but digging up truth." That was accurate and certainly didn't make me look bad. But in my original post, I was talking about my fear that established media would portray us as a beheading mob; as snipped and quoted in The Times, that turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Was the quote taken out of context? Perhaps as much as yours was. Was the quote used to fit the writers' agenda? As much as yours was, I'd say.

And then there is the Sarah Boxer story about Iraqi bloggers that got me so apoplectic. I won't repeat my complaints now (they're all here) but I will note that The New York Times' idle speculation that pro-American Iraqi citizens might be CIA plants spread through big media like your quote spread through small media: The BBC spread it immediately; the Times syndicate spread it as well; and I soon found myself batting it down in a game of pundit wack-a-mole with Eric Alterman on MSNBC. Just as you saw the meme -- as we call it -- of your circle-jerk quote spread through blogs, so did Boxer's speculation -- and its danger -- spread through established media. As you said of blogs: "...a distortion or a half-baked interpretation metastasizes in real time, and can quickly acquire the status of conventional wisdom." Ditto big media. Or worse, it quickly acquires the status of the official record. And which is heard louder, big media or citizens' media? Which is more authoritative and, when wrong, more harmful? Which is harder to stop and correct? I did bring the Boxer story to the attention of my friend and former colleague, Dan Okrent, and he did look into it. But his reply came online and not in print; it did not reach the official record, and so Boxer's speculation stands. (I would like to hear what you think about that story and my issues with it. Maybe that is the excuse for a drink.)

The obvious point: Much of what can be said against blogs can be said against the establishment press, and vice versa.

Now let me suggest how you could have dealt with your blog moment:

The first suggestion is about transparency: When I read The Spectator account of your talk at Columbia, I went online looking for a full transcript or recording so I could judge the remarks in their full context. I didn't find it but wish I had. This is why I suggest that news organizations should put full interviews and source material online -- not because the public is dying for more (they aren't!) but so those who want to find the context can. If your speech were online and if The Times story about Eason Jordan had linked to my fuller quote, readers could have judged the context (and thus, our reporting and editing)..

The second suggestion is about conversation: Just as you've won over folks with this email exchange (and you have), so could you have gone to some of the blogs that snarked at you and responded directly via comments or email. Believe me, you would have impressed and disarmed many of them. These are mostly reasonable people you're dealing with -- they are your readers, after all. If you would have responded to the out-of-context interpretations of your quote, I am confident that your response would have gotten more links and greater Googlejuice than the original blog posts about you. And that would have happened quickly (far faster than any newspaper correction). The distributed nature of this medium would make the correction travel faster than it ever does in print. Go ahead: Try it.

The third suggestion is, again, that you should not judge all blogs by the ones you dislike or who dislike you (just as readers should not judge a paper or journalism by one off-key story or reporter). Out of our email exchange, I've seen many positive comments in my blog and in others'; you are winning friends and influencing bloggers and I think you need to include that in your calculation of the value and danger of blog interaction. And though I make blogs sound like the workers' (or writers') paradise, very Marxian, the truth is that it's not at all egalitarian: Go to Technorati.com and look at who has the most incoming links -- our proxy for influence, a more deliberate and in many ways better measure than circulation -- and then see who's dissing you and who matters. (See, we can be elitist, too.) I can point you to many discussions that are not of the playground variety: Look, for example, at the strong disagreement playing out right now between Powerline of the right and Matthew Yglesias of the left (a scary smart and talented young guy you should hire, by the way): They are disagreeing strongly and pointedly but intelligently and, all-in-all, civilly. It can happen. It does happen.

Finally, various commenters have pointed out that you would make a great blogger. They're right. In fact, because you are writing these emails with full expectation that I'm going to post them, I could argue that you are blogging. Welcome to the club, Bill.

best, jeff

: Also note Dan Drezner's take on the quoting of Keller. For illustration, he took some Keller lines wildly out of context and then said:
What's interesting about these different Keller episodes is that the Columbia Spectator reporter probably took just the juiciest bit from Keller's comments regardless of whether they were consistent with the overall tenor of his remarks -- whereas Jarvis ("mediaman by day, blogboy by night") reprinted all of Keller's comments, allowing one to judge Keller's argument in toto.

Oddly enough, this is undoubtedly one trait that good bloggers share with the New York Times. The Times, as the "paper of record," was very good about printing the full text of important documents and speeches before there was a world wide web. The best bloggers, through hyperlinks, can engage in a similar practice when parsing out someone's comments.

MT help

: Sorry the comments weren't working earlier; the host had a spam attack and shut down comments; they're back. The host is also pushing me to upgrade from MT 2.6.

Question: Does that ruin all my permalinks? Is there any way to prevent that?

Alphabet news: AP get RSS

: Susan Mernit reports that the AP has put up more than a dozen RSS feeds. This is good news for RSS. But it's also damned interesting news for the news business. This means that readers can now go directly to news stories on the AP's site and not on members' (clients') sites (realize that the AP is a collective owned by many of the news organizations it serves; that's why they also let the AP use their news). I'm wondering whether that's going to cause a burp. When the AP started its online news service, it went to incredible pains to make sure you could get to it only through members' sites. I wonder whether Reuters' plans to build an online brand of its own is causing a little competitive indigestion.

Unidentified Flying Objection

: I thought the low-point in NBC News' history was a Geraldo Rivera special on -- no, not the vault -- but satanism. The low-point in CBS news is probably Rathergate. Now I'm wondering whether tonight is the low-point in ABC's: a special on UFOs. I'm hoping they prove that Barbara Walters is an alien.

Keebler's Gates

: Steven I. Weiss sends along a wonderful picture by his friend Shaya Potter that really captures the flavor of the Gates.

February 23, 2005

The ratings are in

: I know some of you don't like Maureen Dowd or Frank Rich but there's a reason they're employed: I just got the latest Times email listing the 10 most popular stories over the last two weeks and two Rich columns and two Dowd columns are on the list.

Blog hater blogs

: How did I miss the news that blog-hater John Dvorak is blogging? Oh, that's right, I know how: I've ignored Dvorak for years. But I'm honored to see that he doesn't ignore us.

Keller of The Times writes, again

: Here is the next installment in the email exchange between New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller and me. The saga starts here and continues here. Bill's latest:

Dear Jeff,

Thanks, first of all, for taking my letter in the spirit intended, for taking the sarcasm in stride -- and for encouraging any humor-impaired readers to do likewise. I try to keep my smart-aleck tendencies in check these days, but I can't seem to get anywhere near that 12th step.

Frankly, I don't find much of anything in your reply to disagree with. I regard the blogosphere as both a treasury from which we draw ideas and information, and a stimulating bull session where our work lives on. It's only natural that in the blogosphere, a medium with a very low threshold, you find a lot of self-indulgent nonsense, misinformation, propaganda and paranoia. But I have an equally long and more unforgiving list of complaints about the more traditional media. My quarrel with the blog world, to the extent I have one, is really with the zealots -- the people whose pose is revolutionary, whose articles of faith are that All Information Must Be Free (as if we should stop paying Dexter Filkins to risk his life in Iraq) and that Editing Is Evil (abolish those fact-checking departments and copy desks and let the Truth emerge organically from the collision of blogs) and so on. My anxiety about the blog world is not that it will put us out of business but that it contributes to an erosion of middle ground, that it accelerates a general polarization of the nation into people, right and left, who are ardently convinced and not very interested in exposing themselves to facts or ideas that contradict their prejudices.

You describe yourself as a Pollyanna, but I think the word you are looking for is one that has been sadly degraded: politician. I'm convinced that the most important division in human affairs is probably not the one between left and right, liberal and conservative. It's the one between zealotry and understanding, between absolute conviction and compromise, between preachers and politicians. True believers, whatever their persuasion, tend to start with the answer and therefore they don't have to THINK about the question. They have moral clarity, often achieved without the benefit of information or reflection. (Full disclosure: my own Claremont connection is Pomona College, and I'm paraphrasing a commencement address I gave there a few years ago. And I tweak bloggers for being self-referential??)

As for your meeting proposal, I'm as sociable as the next guy. I'll give you a call.

Please feel free, btw, to deal with this after your vacation. I keep imploring people at The Times to have a life; there's no reason you shouldn't have one, too.

Cheers, Bill

And here is my response. (The references to pinholes and circle jerks are, in case you've been on vacation too, from Keller's speech at Columbia.)
Dear Bill,

Thanks for the reply (and for the vacation dispensation).

We do, of course, agree about most of this. But we do disagree about whether the blog world will erode the middle ground or can help rediscover it. Certainly, I understand misapprehension about the zealots of online who collect at the edges. They're unpleasant bunches, yet they do not represent their fellow bloggers any more than squeegee men represent their fellow New Yorkers or local radio-news hacks their fellow journalists.

I'll argue instead that it is big media who have, to use your words, accelerated "a general polarization of the nation into people, right and left...." Who is trading on the notion that we are suddenly a land of red v. blue but big media? Except for the oddities of the electoral college, as you know, our political maps would more accurately show us to be a nation of urban vs. exurban. Or I could be really difficult and contend that the close votes in the last two presidential elections actually indicate that we are getting closer. Big media have made division the key narrative of the age.

So next I'll argue that by allowing a wide variety of opinions and perspectives to find voice online, blogs can improve the discourse and will help us reclaim that middle ground. The national debate is not served by homogenizing discussion and disagreement into the one-size-fits-all package that big media has had to become or into the one-from-column-A/one-from-column-B teetering balance of cable news. Don't we often say, nostalgically, that towns were better served when they had many newspapers of differing views serving varied audiences? Isn't that what blogs resurrect: the cacophony of the town square?

Are blogs an echo chamber? On the edges, they are. But there is a vast middle ground of people who are neither red nor blue and defy such simplistic media categorization. We are who we are and our blogs represent us. Also note that we link to those with whom we disagree so we can disagree. That cacophony of voices and viewpoints seems so unruly to those of us who've made our living ordering the world for print. But the noise is good. It's democratic. If we're going to look for closed societies and echo chambers, shouldn't we look at the gang covering the prepackaged press conference that's now a cable commodity? Shouldn't we, as NYU's Jay Rosen has urged, raze spin alley?

From my own experience, blogs have made me more open to different political viewpoints (to the occasional consternation of those on either edge). From a journalistic perspective, blogs have taught me that news should be a conversation and that when big media acts as if the story is done once it's printed, that is just about as closed-off as the closed-minded refusing to hear another side. Closing discussion is aggravating to those who have more to say. So the problem is not that we have too many voices but that too few are heard. That's the real pinhole.

The trick, then, is how big media can take advantage of the new town square and let it be heard to find the middle ground, the common ground. Bloggers already know well how to take advantage of the reporting and editing of big media; the work of reporters is our link blood. Both camps need to acknowledge the value of the other and recognize that, indeed, their common enemy is zealotry and ignorance. That's my hope.

One more word about roles: I know that almost every blogger, once tied down, will agree that most reporters are invaluable. If you tie me down, I'll say the same about many editors (though when I once asked Nick Denton in an instant message why we liked blogging so much, he replied with characteristic eloquence, "No editors," and I agreed). I admire your attempt to reclaim the role of the politician as one who finds wise compromise; good luck. But last night, when I read your email from my Treo to my sister, the Rev. Jarvis -- a most moderate and mainstream Presbyterian pastor -- she did object to your lumping preachers with zealots. And that's the problem with all these roles: There are bad reporters and ham-handed editors and deaf politicians and blind preachers and venomous bloggers but we should not judge any of these roles by their worst. So in trying to tell bloggers not to judge journalists by their worst or journalists bloggers by their worst I am still a damned optimist.

Oh, and who says bloggers don't have editors? You should see all the circle-jerk jokes I edited out of this email.

All the best,

-jeff

We have met the enemy and he ain't us

: Matthew Yglesias is staying on Powerline's case for saying that Jimmy Carter and then that all Democrats are on the other side and betraying America. I'm rooting for Matthew.

Blogsman's holiday

: I'm doing the blog segment on MSNBC's Connected this afternoon at 5p ET, talking about the buzz in blogs. So, bloggers, what's the buzz? What conversations do you see taking off today?

Before that, I'm giving the blogboy performance for a media company's strategists. I'm the horror show.

This is one helluva way to spend a vacation.

To the barricades, bloggers

: The Committee to Protect Bloggers is getting attention and that's good. We need to keep this going: One of our own is in jail for no greater crime. than speaking his mind.

February 22, 2005

Freedom to Connect

: At the Freedom to Connect conference about the FCC and telecom legislation and spectrum and free speech organized by David Isenberg, I'm going to have the privilege of interviewing, Oprah-like Charlie-Rose-like, Bob Corn-Revere, a First Amendment attorney with the most amazing credentials:

Served as counsel in litigation involving the Communications Decency Act, the Child Online Protection Act, Telephone Consumer Protection Act, Internet content filtering in public libraries, public broadcasting regulations and export controls on encryption software

Lead counsel in United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., in which the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Section 505 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a violation of the First Amendment

Successfully petitioned Governor George E. Pataki to grant the first posthumous pardon in New York history to the late comedian Lenny Bruce

Lead counsel in Huminski v. Corsones, in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit established the First Amendment right of individuals to observe court proceedings....

: There's only a short time left to get the early-bird pricing to register. If you care about the future of media and telecommunications and free speech, this is going to be a major event.

At long effin' last

: The LA Times says broadcasters are, at long last, going to challenge the FCC's indecency cops.

"I think the government is more vulnerable to an indecency challenge than they've ever been before," said Kurt A. Wimmer, a Washington communications lawyer....

Broadcasters haven't brought a major indecency or obscenity case since 1978, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the FCC's authority to issue indecency fines. That case involved a Pacifica radio station's airing in 1973 of comedian George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" routine.

If the broadcasters had fought long ago, we might not be in this unconstitutional mess. CBS, which wimped out with a recent consent decree, is going to fight the Janet Jackson case. And Fox is, as I've reported before, fighting the Married by America fine (the one brought about by only three letter writers).

If the broadcasters had had the balls to fight this before, they might have given constitutional cover to Congress not to vote against the First Amendment. But they were wimpy and late.

Democracy blogging

: Robert Mayer sends news of a new blog that covers elections and movements for democracy in nations that need both. Publius Pundit looks very good.

We get rhythm

: The Wall Street Journal reports on a new procedure for atrial fibrilation, days after Instawife tried two procedures and I mentioned a new drug. This is the same condition Tony Blair had and various commenters here have told their stories.

To the barricades, bloggers

: The Committee to Protect Bloggers is urging support from all bloggers on Feb. 22 -- today -- to bring international attention to the plight of two bloggers, Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad, jailed in Iran. Here's a BBC story.

I first discovered the Iranian blog culture when its Johnny Appleseed, Hossein Derakhshan, reported on the arrest of blogger Sina Motallebi. We blogged about that and brought international attention to the story and Sina credits that with helping to get him out of jail and out of the country.

These people are in jail for doing exactly what we have the privilege of doing: Speaking. We must stand with them.

So please link to the Committee to Protect Bloggers and please bring attention to what his happening to our colleagues in Iran.

: UPDATE: Reuters has a story about the conviction and sentencing of an Iranian blogger:

An Iranian journalist was jailed for 14 years on charges ranging from espionage to insulting the country's leaders in an unusually heavy sentence in Iran, where tens of journalists have been tried in recent years.
Rights activists said on Tuesday that Arash Sigarchi, 28, was convicted by the Revolutionary Court in the Caspian province of Gilan in northern Iran.

Sigarchi, a newspaper editor in Gilan who also wrote an Internet journal or "weblog," was arrested last month after responding to a summons from the Intelligence Ministry.

TiVo: The anti-cable

: Om Malik started the ball rolling, suggesting what he would do to save TiVo: He'd give away 2 million boxes to get to 5 million customers paying the annuity for what he thinks can become a premium club sold without marketing. Next, George Hotelling at PVRBlog reacts. Then Fred Wilson decides not answer the TiVo call but then imagines what he'd do, which is pretty much what I'd do with a few variatons on his and Om's themes:

1. Turn TiVo into the anti-cable: Let us download, store, organize, and serve media from both cable and -- this is the important part -- the internet. Let us use it for BitTorrents, podcasts, recorded satellite radio shows, recorded broadcast radio shows, MovieLink et al movies, Audible stuff, MP3s, my pictures: anything. Make it a place for my stuff.

2. Release TiVo from the box; store my stuff in the Internet so I can get to it from anywhere, including the den and the bedroom and soon including my mobile phone. Yeah, sure, you'll have fun times with the MPAA and RIAA but by the time they get you into court, the people will be addicted to the freedom and you'll have won. Make it the everywhere gadget, the tomorrow device without the gadget or the device.

3. Forget about getting people to pay for another TV guide. Ask TV Guide: People don't pay for that anymore. That has been my problem with TiVo; that is why I have resisted: I didn't want to pay for a grid, no matter how good it is. But I also understand that selling hardware is not a great business. So follow the Apple example and sell software: The best way to store and serve my stuff and let me do that on the box you sell or on a box I buy (OK, that's more Microsoft, but you get the point: sell the functionality, not the chip). More important, follow the Apple example and sell community (by making it, as Om suggests, an exclusive club): Aggregate the opinions and recommendations, the links and behavior, the Flickrish tags of the TiVo audience so they help me find what I want to watch even better than today's TiVo (or TV Guide) do; when I organize my own media, capture that and share the logic in aggregate with everyone else in the club. Charge a one-time admission for the box or software and the entry into the club (and then charge me for upgrades later, a la Apple).

4. Market yourself as the alternative to cable that does cable and the internet and more, as tomorrow's everything, anywhere, anytime, any way ticket to media freedom.

That's what I'd do.

February 21, 2005

Keller of The Times speaks

: NY Times Executive Editor Bill Keller spoke at Columbia on topics including blogs:

Keller’s speech focused on the struggle of print journalism to maintain its relevance in the face of constant cable news updates, increased blogging, and failures in credibility.

He noted that, according to a recent opinion poll, the public’s trust in journalists is at its lowest point in decades. He attributed this in part to the increasingly polarized nature of the American public, who look to the press for support of their viewpoints.

“At the moment,” he said, “the major press is under attack from ideologues on the right and left.”

Keller also sees “blogging,” or online writing that blurs news and commentary, as a mixed blessing. While he celebrated the blogger’s ability to uncover breaking news, he noted that a blog’s inherent bias might be detrimental to the reader. “A blog is still a view of the world through a pinhole,” he said, noting that it can sometimes fall as low as being a “one man circle jerk.”

Mickey Kaus is disturbed by the picture he painted.

: I got an email response to my response to his reponse to my post from Keller and I wanted to let you know that but I'm not responding or posting yet because I'm on vacation (kind of) and even Bill said I could deal with it after I get back (though at least one commenter here is less understanding).

The rich get richer. Corollary: The famous get more famous.

: Jeopardy all-time champ Ken Jennings has a Cingular commercial.

New

: Jonathan Weber, former editor of The Industry Standard, has a new site of local blog posts for the Western states.

Dialogue

: Patterico -- who has been biting the butt of the LA Times for sometime -- interviews Times opinion editor Bob Sipchen and blogs it. I don't know whether Patterico will agree -- I'll bet he won't -- but I consider his history with the LA Times to be a success story in teaching big media to listen and not just lecture. When he pushed them on a big story against one Supreme Court justice of one stripe, they listened and published a story against another of the other stripe. A few weeks ago, they invited him to publish a piece in the Times about correcting the Times. And now he's interviewing an editor. He's still critical of the paper and that's fine. But they're talking. And that's good.

What's second prize?

: We're in the hotel from hell in Philly: took hours to get in after check-in time; there's a strange noise that sounds like every flush in the building comes through our rooms that went on all night (but, oddly, disappears in the); parking costs $31; at at 10p they tell us they ran out of blankets for our son's unmade bed. Next time: The Four Seasons.

Anyway, blogging will be limted by tourism and sleep deprivation.

More about About

: Two damned good posts about The Times' About deal: one from John Battelle and one from Jay Rosen.

: LATER: Simon Waldman of the Guardian also weighs in.

Trees rejoice

: The Washington Post sums up the woes of the newspaper industry.

"Print is dead," Sports Illustrated President John Squires told a room full of newspaper and magazine circulation executives at a conference in Toronto in November. His advice? "Get over it," meaning publishers should stop trying to save their ink-on-paper product and focus on electronic delivery of their journalism.
It's not dead. But it's not growing. And in an economy that demands growth, that smells like death.

The story has nothing radically news but it is a good sum of the state of the business. More later...

gozno.jpgGone-zo

: Hunter Thompson commits suicide.

Thompson was really the first reaction to one-size-fits-all journalism. He was the argument that the grand shared experience of media in a three-network, one-newspaper-town world was actually bad because it was boring and institutional and inhuman. Thompson tried to inject humanity back into journalism. He injected it like drugs into his veins and, yes, sometimes it was a bad trip.

: LATER: At the Borders near here, they wasted no time putting up a sales shrine.

February 20, 2005

Keller of The Times writes

: The other day, I wrote an open letter here to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, suggesting that we should get professional and citizen journalists, Timesmen and bloggers, together to find common ground. Mr. Keller responded.

Let me first confess that I'm late telling you about that response because, well, I'm lazy or busy (pick your excuse). I didn't even respond to Mr. Keller for two days because I didn't want to just dash off an email to the editor of the damned NY Times. He emailed me here and there wondering what had become of his response and my manners. So I apologize to him and you for not making it clear earlier that he responded promptly.

We had an enjoyable if sandy exchange of email. I said I would blog that we'd had that and wouldn't say more yet because the exchange wasn't over. He said I could blog as much of the emails as I wanted. He outdid me in the transparency derby and boy, am I embarrassed.

So here is Bill Keller's email to me and mine back. Please turn on your [wit] and [satire] tags, folks, and don't take Mr. Keller literally on everything he says; this is how newspaper folks talk to each other; it's our way to be cool. In other words: Be nice. First, his response to me:

Dear Mr. Jarvis,

Thank you for your open letter. I admire the initiative you have shown in appointing yourself the representative of tens of thousands of bloggers in what you call "the citizens' media." (btw, why "citizens"? Isn't that a little insensitive to stateless bloggers, or bloggers bearing only green cards? "People's media" strikes me as more inclusive, and it has a pedigree. Just a thought.) I applaud your entrepreneurial spirit. When I was in high school, several classmates and I were assigned to represent Peru at a Model United Nations conference in Berkeley. One member of our delegation, who shared your gift for bold opportunism, proposed that when the gathering broke into committees to draft resolutions on the issues of the day each of us should walk to the head of our meeting room. Then we should casually take charge of organizing the selection of a committee chairman. Naturally, chutzpah was rewarded. We were all selected chairmen of our respective committees. Peru took over the United Nations. Well, it was only the MODEL United Nations, not a mighty engine of discourse like the blogosphere, but you take my point.

Sorry for the digression. A little case of blogorrhea.

Okay, enough Mr. Wise Guy. Mr. Jarvis, you and I have some things in common. We're guys of the same generation who have spent most of our lives laboring in the MSM. We are both devoted to the cause of a well-informed citizenry. I suspect we both feel proud and humbled to play a part in that cause. We both understand that the media world is changing in profound and exciting ways -- although you seem pretty convinced that you know where it ends up, while I'm not so certain of the trajectory. We should probably be on a first-name basis.

In your open letter you propose to lead a delegation from the citizen's media to a kind of summit meeting with editors and reporters of The Times, where we would all "vent," eat bagels, and then negotiate some kind of cooperation. I'm enthusiastically in favor of healthy dialogue among people engaged in a common pursuit. Jill Abramson's presence at the recent blog conference in Cambridge demonstrates, I think, that I'm not the only one here who feels that way. At the same time, I'm not sure what you see as the possible fruit of a blog-Times meeting. Why would anyone who has the infinite audience of the Internet at his disposal want to vent for a select audience of MSM dinosaurs? And, in any case, what's the point of negotiating a compact with an institution you -- or at least your more theological brethren in the blogosphere -- regard as irrelevant? And, finally, what, aside from a little creative friction, is wrong with the relationship we have? We can and do use blogs as a source of tips, course corrections, leads and insights without requiring a more formal collaboration along the lines you seem to be suggesting. In turn, our website is one of the, if not the, most linked news source for bloggers; we are a major supplier of news and conversation for the blog world, without anyone having to organize a meeting or negotiate a protocol. In other words, for all the talk of rendering us obsolete, and all your concern about MSM condescension (more perceived than real, I believe, but that's easy for me to say), The Times and the blog world have an extremely robust relationship. Seriously, what does a meeting get either of us?

I'll tell you what. Let's dispense with the bagels and conference room (so Old Media) and organize a live chat on-line. I'll take an hour off from my evil left-wing (or is it right-wing?) conspiracy to bamboozle the world, and we'll swap thoughts. I'm bound to learn something.

Can I just state something for the record? While we probably have our differences on the role of the MSM (btw, I personally favor "elite media," at least as it pertains to the NYT) I would like to make clear that I consider blogs relevant and important. I do not hold them in disdain, as you imply. I won't risk embarrassing my favorite bloggers by identifying them (except to say that buzzmachine is bookmarked in my office and at home) but I find the best of them to be a source of provocative insights, first-hand witness, original analysis, rollicking argument and occasional revelation. As I'm sure you will agree, you can also find bloggers who are paranoid, propagandistic, unreliable, hate-filled, self-indulgent, self-important and humorless. (Just like people! See above, "people's media.")

I hope you will accept this in the same constructive spirit as your open letter. And if not, I hope you will have countless hours of fun fly-specking it for evidence of bad attitude and hidden agendas.

Best regards, Bill Keller

And here is my response, in turn:
Mr. Keller,

I apologize for the syncopated converation. I'll blame the delay on the needless insanity that precedes vacations: Yes, even bloggers and online guys get busy; hell, every minute of every day is a deadline for us. I'll also blame not wanting to dash off a reply to the editor of the NY Times.

I'll digress...

My college Model UN team from Claremont (Len's alma mater) was Romania. Exhibiting, as you put it, bold opportunism, I practically led a world takeover. Good thing (a) it was only the model UN and (b) I didn't stay at Claremont with all the conservative poli sci majors and plot a real world takeover or at least an invasion of Iraq. I went into journalism instead.

I like the name "people's media." I briefly called it "populist media" but was quickly convinced, by Jay Rosen, that that brought along as much baggage as a Delta flight. Anything is better than "blog," don't you agree? And, by the way, it's not just tens of thousands of bloggers; it's 8 million bloggers (about half active) with 32 million readers, rapidly growing (says Pew). And that doesn't count About.com.

As for "MSM," I object to the view that established media is mainstream. You're right -- it's elitist. It's the blogs that are the mainstream. I prefer to call what we do in suits big media.

But I'll stop digressing.

So let me begin by making this clear: I love The Times. I have funny stories about applying for a job there when I was a news nipper (one involving Sidney Schanberg, the other involving a family friend who spotted me in the newsroom and told me to get out before it was too late). I respect, admire, cherish, and yes, love The Times. It's tough love, though. It's creative friction, as you say. It's about the conceit of thinking that the best can be even better.

So, yes, I go to The Times before any ot