May 31, 2005
The scoop
: The Post reports on the story behind the story in Vanity Fair and how The Post got scooped: because Woodward kept his promise not to reveal Deep Throat's identity until he was released from the pledge. The Vanity Fair story was edited by my colleague and friend, David Friend. animal sex clip
Vanity Fair, too, was late to the story but moments after it broke on the internet, the text came online. animal sex clip
: Also in the Post, Hank Steuver contemplates life after the secret: What could be more of a letdown than finding out who Deep Throat is? Finding it out in Vanity Fair? And not really finding it out in Vanity Fair so much as feeling it crash-land across the Internet and the cable news networks, days before the magazine even hits the stands? Finding out that you don't care anymore? Watching it not resonate among people younger than 30?...animal sex clip
Perhaps Deep Throat's lovely (and daring) parting gift to Washington, especially to reporters, is simple: He actually exists. He is not fabrication or composite. He is one man, a fact not easily proved had he taken his secret to the grave. That in itself, in an era where trust has been shredded beyond recognition, is something to behold. : And on anoymous sources, from Kit Seelye's NY Times media report: The emergence of the ultimate anonymous source comes at a time when newsrooms are struggling with questions about the use of such sources.animal sex clip
"We've had all this stuff about anonymous sources and God knows yes, we all know anonymous sources are overused," said Lou Cannon, a former reporter for The Post. "But this really shows you, this story would have never come out if we had a rule against anonymous sources." animal sex clip
The world is a city desk and all the people merely correspondents
: Finally got some couch time and read Glenn Reynolds' good Wall Street Journal piece about how anyone can and will report. animal sex clip
Ombud too many?
: Why does ESPN need an ombudsman? For Cubs fans to complain about Cubs jokes? What's next: A FoodTV ombudsman to deal with garlic issues? Has this trend gone too far?animal sex clip
Deep Throated
: Isn't it a little embarrassing for the Washington Post that Deep Throat outs himself -- Mark Felt says he's the guy -- but the Post has to run a wire-service report quoting the paper's own "no comment"? Wodward and Bernstein still say they won't say anything until Throat dies (felt is 91 and so that may not be too far off). The story is breaking via Vanity Fair, which also doesn't have it up online. animal sex clip
: Thanks to Bill K for putting the scoop up in the comments. At first, I thought it was clever new comment spam but, no, it was breaking news. Thanks, Bill.
: Just got the call that I'll be on MSNBC's Connected at 5p to talk about this. animal sex clip
: UPDATE: Tristan Louis corrects me: The Vanity Fair story is up here. It's now up on the mag site proper. animal sex clip
: OOPS: Students said they had nailed who Deep Throat was. They were wrong. animal sex clip
: Tim Noah summarizes now-out-of-date speculation. animal sex clip
: The Post proper isn't touching the story still but it's Aschenblog is. Handy, them bloggers. animal sex clip
: FLASH: Woodward confirms that Felt is the Throat.animal sex clip
I'm about to go on MSNBC, blogging from the studio, and I"m hearing guests who said this wasn't true backtracking fast. Most amusing. animal sex clip
Bottom line: A good conspiracy theory never dies. animal sex clip
: If Watergate happened today, Deep Throat would have had a blog. animal sex clip
: I was about to go on and then they broke in with a press conference from Felt's family. I was in the middle of opening my mouth to speak; how many would love to stop me at that point. I don't know whether I'll get back on...animal sex clip
... I didn't.animal sex clip
: I say this is a good day for democracy. In this age of transparency, we believe that the people deserve to know. And Felt was an agent of truth. So was journalism. That remains a story to aspire to. animal sex clip
Media 2.0: Plastics, plastics, plastics
: Here is a superb powerpoint on the new economics of media. I'll excerpt and comment later but you'll want to dig into it now. [via PaidContent]animal sex clip
Podcast open the doors
: Ernie Miller asks a great question: Why isn't Congress podcasting itself? Every committee and debate should be available for us to hear. animal sex clip
I'll take it down a few levels and suggest that every town board and school board should be podcast. I've long wanted to see local services enable citizens to video these meetings because, ironically, the very reason I care most about what happens in them -- I have kids -- is the reason I can't attend them. But I'd watch them, I used to say. animal sex clip
Well, who needs to watch them? They just sit and drone. Listening would work well -- especially when podcasts can be searched and indexed. animal sex clip
We should all storm our town halls and demand podcasts (and then politely explain what podcasts and iPods and the internet are). animal sex clip
Grow up
: I've come to believe that newspapers and network news are barking up the wrong tree trying to attract young people, holding their conferences and issuing reports and fretting about what they want so we can give it to them. animal sex clip
The problem is that such a strategy is inherently condescending and pandering and that's why I don't think it will work. animal sex clip
As a wise colleague of mine, Joan Feeney -- my editorial partner at the founding of Entertainment Weekly -- once wisely said, if you build a new product based on a demographic, you will lose. If you build a new product based on a great idea with passion behind it, you just might win. animal sex clip
Time Inc. -- where Joan and I worked at the time -- had tried for years to create magazines for women and consistently failed, because it was men who were trying to figure out what they -- women -- wanted. Freud couldn't have successfully edited some of the tripe the regimes then published. As another colleague of ours famously said, the men at Time Inc. saw women "only from neck to knees." It took Time Inc. years to learn that magazines aimed at women would fail, but magazines women like will succeed (witness People, InStyle, and others). animal sex clip
The problem with the youth strategy is that it treats young people as if they are alien beings. But they're just people, like you or even white-bearded me. They're not "they." They're "us." animal sex clip
You don't have to be young to use RSS or an iPod or mobile digital networks or wi-fi. You don't have to be young to appreciate the conversation the internet enables. You don't have to be young to question authority or distrust the press. animal sex clip
When we hear research about how young people treat news differently it could just be that they are the generation freed to think differently, unencumbered by our old-fart habits. If we old farts would free ourselves, we'd think differently, too. animal sex clip
So what's the right strategy? animal sex clip
Serve news to anytime anywhere because anyone should want that. Join in a conversation because no one wants to be lectured to. Be honest and transparent because no one has to trust you. animal sex clip
It's not about age. It's about change. animal sex clip
J-
: We're suddenly hearing much debate about about the future of journalism schools -- following (though perhaps it should be leading) -- the debate about the future of journalism. animal sex clip
But the discussion I've heard so far has focused exclusively on journalism students and professional journalists and has left out a vital constituency: the public. animal sex clip
Just as the definition of news is expanding, so should the definitions of journalist and journalism ... and journalism education. animal sex clip
As citizens practice journalism, they need to be let into the cathedral before they come and tear it down. animal sex clip
Big, old, professional, traditional, mainstream news media should support -- rather than exclude -- these citizens with content, promotion, training, and revenue. They must do this to support the practice, the expansion (yes, expansion), and the business of journalism. animal sex clip
And, so, journalism schools should help support these citizen journalists, or they risk being left out of the future of journalism. animal sex clip
Journalism schools can train citizens in tricks of the trade (and remember: it is just a trade): How to get access and information, how to write and package, how to use tools, how to research, how to vet and verify. animal sex clip
But journalism schools must also learn from the citizens: How the people view the press, what information they need (rather than what we say they need), new standards of trust. animal sex clip
Journalism schools should not issue ethical codes but collaborate with the public journalism serves to debate ethical issues in the press. animal sex clip
Journalism schools can study the changes in the press brought on by the internet and citizen's media, can help big media adapt and survive, and help citizens practice this craft well. animal sex clip
All of which leads, no surprise, to a plug for my own hobbyhorse:animal sex clip
: A CITIZENS' MEDIA CENTER: About a year ago, I plugged the notion of a Citizens' Media Center that would bring together journalism students, citizen journalists, big-media journalists, and newsmakers. I was going to start to raise funding for a planning grant but then got tied up in some of the knots of the foundation and university worlds (alien earths to me). But this is an opportune moment to plug it again. Here is a short version of the proposal I wrote (which I'd change a bit knowing what I know now). Take a look. animal sex clip
: ON JOURNALISM SCHOOLS: Much of this discussion is coming out now because of the new Carnegie-Knight initiative to improve journalism education. Here are a few of many links on the topic:animal sex clip
At Broadcasting & Cable's blog, Joel Meyer contemplates the future of j-schools on the occasion of his own graduation from one with good links to Greg Lindsay's j-screed and David Halberstam's commencement speech at Columbia and Howard Finberg's report on the new Carnegie-Knight initiative on improving journalism education.animal sex clip
Lindsay: Do you side with the establishment in hopes that you will someday inherit it; or do you subvert the status quo by creating something new in hopes of winning a place at the table down the road? animal sex clip
In case you haven't already figured it out: By enrolling in j-school, you (perhaps unwittingly) picked the establishment. Any guesses as to what's on the other side? Bloggers, for one. The debate about whether bloggers are journalists ultimately boils down to a struggle about whether the former should be granted the privileges and pay packages of the latter. Bloggers are outsiders seeking status the only way outsiders know how: by prying it away from those who currently have it. Finberg: Journalism professors are often torn between the needs of the practical -– turning out well-trained journalists -– and the desire for the scholarly, which provides more job opportunities.animal sex clip
Some journalism educators who hope to adjust curriculum to reflect the digital age find themselves hampered by accreditation policies....animal sex clip
The future of journalism training is not an academic debate. It is tied closely to the larger issue of training for professional journalists. animal sex clip
The media industry has spent little on –- and paid little attention to -- the continuing education of its professionals.... Tim Porter: The question, of course, is one that confronts all institutions trying to change: Can the priesthood reinvent itself or will good intentions - even those with a $6 million underwriting - be swallowed by tradition and intransigence?animal sex clip
One indication that the temple guards - to continue the metaphor - are still going to control the acolytes is the emphasis the new initiative places on investigative reporting.... animal sex clip
Investigative reporting is a critical differentiator for professional journalism from the media noise we live in, but should it be a core element - an emphasis - of journalism education over other components? I'm not so sure.animal sex clip
I would substitute and start with community journalism (which I know does not exclude investigative reporting). Most journalists coming out of school are confronted either with small town newspapers or suburban news bureau in their first jobs, where investigative reporting is about as popular -- or wanted -- as first-person essays. Andew Cline with a most insightful view of journalistic arrogance:: The plain fact of the matter is that most journalism is practiced at the local level for modest news organizations. That's where most of our students will go to work. And I think we do our students, and the citizens of the communities in which they practice, a disservice by encouraging (even) our (best) students to believe that good journalism must be practiced at big-time news organizations.animal sex clip
The only size that matters in journalism is community assessment of its quality (does it help do what must be done?) and not its bigness in terms of national influence or circulation....animal sex clip
* We teach students to be arrogant when we teach them that national is better than local.animal sex clip
* We teach students to be arrogant when we teach them that the audience is "general."animal sex clip
* We teach students to be arrogant when we teach them to elevate investigative reporting over solid day-to-day reporting.animal sex clip
* We teach students to be arrogant when we teach them to value winning prizes for their work.animal sex clip
* We teach students to be arrogant when we fail to teach them what language really is, how it really works, and how people really use it.animal sex clip
* We teach students to be arrogant when we teach them that journalists have more First Amendment rights than citizens.animal sex clip
* We teach students to be arrogant when we teach them that journalists are responsible for making democracy work.animal sex clip
* We teach students to be arrogant when we teach them to ignore the fact that they are players in civic affairs.animal sex clip
* We teach students to be arrogant when we teach them the nonsense of the philosophical ideal of objectivity rather than the objective process of good reporting.animal sex clip
* We teach students to be arrogant when we fail to teach them that the public always knows more than they do. Donica Mensing on the role schools could play: Journalism educators clearly have a stake in the outcome of restoring trust in the media, and they could play a unique role in generating truly innovative journalism that connects with and serves various publics. Whether universities can break free of some of the institutional patterns that tend to trap them in passing along the approved canon instead of innovating and changing journalism, is an open question. Regardless, this experiment in collaboration will be an interesting one to watch. See also Paul Conley and Bob Stepno on the schools left out. animal sex clip
: It's a good and healthy discussion and I'm eager to hear Jay Rosen pipe in. animal sex clip
May 30, 2005
Vive les blogs
: Stephen Baker reports, thanks to Loic Le Meur, that blogs were a factor in the French non to the EU constitution.animal sex clip
: I"m listening to the BBC's Up All Night now, before going on, and they're talking about just this. animal sex clip
Hoder, Wired
: Wired magazine's piece about our friend Hossein Derakhshan, by Jeff Howe, is now online. animal sex clip
Skypecasting
: It's not only podcasters who are using Skype for interviews, the BBC is... because it offers higher quality than a plain old phone line. animal sex clip
I'm going to be on the BBC's Up All Night sometime Monday night to blather on blogs and in the process of setting up, Kevin Anderson said they use Skype because it's so good. From his emails: Yes, we're using Skype heavily. We recently conducted an interview with Mr Behi, an Iranian blogger, via Skype. It's very useful for us in that repressive governments can't block it due to its distributed nature. And seeing as on a good connection, it's a full 44Khz signal, it's just below the quality of the very expensive ISDN broadcast equipment we have. Last week, I also picked up a copy of Focus, the German news magazine with a cover on "internet telephony for all," including Skype. I'm amazed that VOIP is a cover story. But then, why shouldn't it be: It's exploding the old networks and old ways. animal sex clip
How to share
: The BBC is offering discounts to freelancers for courses on how to do TV. The Beeb has been, perhaps, the most generous big-media operation -- with its expertise -- when it comes to training people how to do what they do. As has been reported previously, they are also looking at starting a journalism school. animal sex clip
Distributed reporting assignment desk: The transparency test
: This would be a great assignment for a distributed army of citizen reporters: animal sex clip
The Toronto Star sent reporters from across Canada into government offices to try to get documents to which citizens are entitled. animal sex clip
If somebody would organize it, that would be a good idea for bloggers to swarm the government across the country to see just how transparent it is: What if we all went to our own town halls, county offices, and/or state governments to request, say:
: Expense accounts of elected officials.
: Spending records on any given program (e.g., what cars government buys... when it should be buying Hyundais).
: School class size or testing performance.
: Crime statistics. animal sex clip
Then we could all post our reports with a standard tag -- e.g., transparency test -- that could be aggregated via Technorati and PubSub. animal sex clip
A news organization could be good at organizing such a distributed effort, because they could publicize the effort and set the standards and edit the results into a good story. But you don't need a news organization to handle this; anyone could. It's just that newspapers and TV news operations would be smart to try projects such as this as a way to expand their newsgathering. animal sex clip
Here's what the Star found: Canadians seeking basic government information about class sizes, restaurant safety or police complaints are up against a culture of secrecy, a national audit of openness shows.animal sex clip
In the country's first-ever practical test of transparency, reporters visited city halls, police forces, school boards and federal government offices across Canada to test how bureaucrats administer laws protecting the public's right to government information. They found a confusing patchwork of policies across the country.animal sex clip
Officials handed over records to just one in every three requesters who came in person. The rest remained locked tight in government filing cabinets as applicants were told they had to file time-consuming — and often expensive — formal requests under provincial or federal access laws. [ via Bill Doskoch] animal sex clip
: In the comments, Larry Borsato corrects me to say this was a project across many papers in Canada. Could have just as easily have been across many citizens. animal sex clip
Posted
 : Not sure why, but Howard Kurtz devotes part of his Washington Post column today to this very blog. I'm flattered and too egotistical to be too embarrassed. animal sex clip
(Just to clarify one thing about About, not that anyone should care: I'll be working as a consultant, part-time, and not on staff and that's how I can continue to blog. And, yes, I tweaked the deal at first but obviously signed onto the vision of it as a platform for distributed media, because that's why I'm there and, having met the staff, I'm happy as a clam in cocktail sauce.)animal sex clip
And here's my son's blog.animal sex clip
: OH, AND... If anybody's in D.C. and can save a copy of the Style section, I'd be grateful to see it in print. As I said: I'm an egotist and I may be blogboy now but I'm not so jaded I don't like seeing my name in print.animal sex clip
Vacation in Maine!
 : My wonderful sister has a wonderful riverfront home in Bath, Maine available for rental during the summer. Details: Beautifully restored 100-year-old Saltbox on Kennebec in Bath; open-concept living room, dining and kitchen plus study (two sleepers); second floor two bedrooms, large bathroom; wrap-around deck; lawn down to dock and water. Available June 18 - October 29. High season (July 2 – August 31) $1200 per week; Off season $950 per week. Go here for pictures and contact information. animal sex clip
May 29, 2005
A historic day: I agree with the French
: The French resoundingly defeated the European Union constitution. I didn't much like it when it came out. Says the International Herald-Tribune: With nearly 83 percent of the votes counted, the French Interior Ministry said the no camp had 57.26 percent, compared with 42.74 for the yes....animal sex clip
Turnout was estimated at more than 70 percent, far exceeding other recent elections in France. The final figure was expected to surpass turnout in the referendum on the Maastricht Treaty 13 years ago that paved the way to the euro.
"It's a big no," said Bruno Jeanbart, director of political research at the CSA polling station. "It's a twin protest vote against the government and against Europe." It's about trying to turn Europe in to a faux nation. It's about protectionism. It's about Europe thinking it is a world player when it is no longer. And it's about a bad constitution that made up for in bureaucracy what it lacked in vision. animal sex clip
The moderate revolution?
: Howard Kurtz writes that blog coverage of the moderate revolution was filled with anger from the right and left while mainstream media celebrated the moderation (as did I... apparently because I am either strange or mainstream, take your pick). He's onto something: It was the perfect storm for the blogosphere, an issue on which both right-wingers and left-wingers could rise up in rare unison and smite the craven offenders.animal sex clip
Both sides hated, castigated and otherwise took a dim view of the last-minute deal this week that averted a nuclear showdown over Senate filibusters.
Let the mainstream media praise as bipartisan statesmen the mushy moderates who cobbled together the compromise. Many bloggers were infuriated, castigating the so-called Gang of 14 (and especially John McCain) as knaves and turncoats.animal sex clip
It was another reminder, as if one were needed, of the yawning gap between the establishment press, which loves moderates and moderation, and the cyberworld, which tends to be driven by partisan passions. But I think that says more about the media than about the nation. animal sex clip
I do believe (because I want to) that the people prefer Congress to shut up and do its work and not fight from the fringes and that the people are inherently moderate -- or at least the wisdom of the crowd is -- and that's why no party takes over the country for too long (yet). animal sex clip
In that sense, I think, neither the blogs nor mainstream press reflect the people, who talk, think, fret, and argue about Congress a helluva lot less than either reporters or bloggers. animal sex clip
What this split in coverage really indicates, as Kurtz says, is the essential difference between big and citizens' media (and I'm repeating myself): because newspapers are institutional and blogs are personal, newspapers try to be dispassionate while blogs are passionate. animal sex clip
And that's what we see in the coverage of what I hope to call the moderate revolution: Blogs speak up when they have cause to be pissed about or to celebrate over but rarely to be moderate and thus dull. The big press has to cover the story and thinks it has to see both sides; it likes to show both sides yelling but, of course, it doesn't want to be caught yelling itself. animal sex clip
And, in the end, it's hard to get a red-faced rant in defense of moderation, compromise, and the middleground, though I'd like to try to figure out how. animal sex clip
May 28, 2005
Don't get well
: The Times of London reports that Iraqi murderer Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has fled to Iran with a fever after being injured by shrapnel in an American attack. animal sex clip
It's a conspiracy!
: Oliver Stone arrested on drug charges. animal sex clip
Blooks
: Steve Rubel has a good roundup of the smart ways Freakonomics was marketed via blogs. This will be one of the exhibits in my talk to Book Expo about blogs. Please continue to feed me more (and thanks for the comments here). animal sex clip
: LATER: Rex says: Don't be so sure. animal sex clip
Save the F man
: I am glad to see a movement swelling to save Arthur Chi'en, the hapless WCBS reporter who, not knowing he was on the air, asked a couple of bozos shilling for the Opie & Anthony show who were trying to mess up his report, "What's your fucking problem, man." Everyone writing about this, including Chi'en himself, first falls down saying that was stupid and regretable and wrong. But was it worth firing the man? animal sex clip
All he did was say fucking. animal sex clip
Have we come to the point in this country when we honestly think that a word that has lost all meaning, just a word, is going to cause the downfall of the nation and is worth a man's career? animal sex clip
Perspective, people!animal sex clip
What's offensive is that we let the offended run the world. animal sex clip
Well, now I'm offended. WCBS should not have buckled under to pressure -- anticipated pressure at that -- just because of one stupid word. animal sex clip
It is time to send a message back to the fringies and tell them that they have their priorities all out of wack. animal sex clip
A blogger named Sergio D. Caplan started a site to Save Arthur Chi'en with instructions for calling WCBS or just using this form; that's what I'm doing (though, amazingly, they don't have a link to send a message to the news department -- the one department that should be listening to the public!). animal sex clip
This week, Clyde Haberman wrote a column in The Times drawing attention to the issue this week and reporting that fellow reporters are dismayed and that the communications director of the transportion authority complained to the station. It's a cause.animal sex clip
So join me in writing to WCBS and defending not just Arthur Chi'en but sanity. It is insane that you fire Arthur Chi'en for one simple, fucking word. It's just a word, people. You throw out a man's career. You buckle under to the fringe. You embarrass yourself. You insult your audience (what, you think we can't take care of ourselves?). Because of one fucking word. For shame. Bring back Arthur Chi'en! : I STAND CORRECTED: He actually said, "What the fuck's your problem, man?" The stories about this were so coy, it was impossible to tell and I parsed it wrongly. For grammar, give me an F. animal sex clip
May 27, 2005
Security blog
: Rick Francona, a security analyst at MSNBC I've shared desk space with at the network, has a new blog on the Middle East and security. animal sex clip
Blogs and books
: I'm giving a talk at Book Expo, the big publishing convention, this week on how all the constituencies of the word biz can use citizens' media. I want to brainstorm about the ways that blogs can help authors, agents, publishers/editors, marketers, and retailers -- from finding new talent to writing books online with your audience to building a direct relationship with your readers to creating communities.animal sex clip
I'm eager to get any of your ideas for how blogs and books should interact. Please comment away. Thanks. animal sex clip
News exec blogs
: Scott Anderson, an online exec at Tribune (and a Howard Stern fan.... we have so much in common) has been blogging inside the venerable Tribune Tower but now his blog is public and it's on my RSS feed now. animal sex clip
So what they told you when you entered puberty was right...
: ...Viagra can cause blindness. animal sex clip
Future
: Yesterday, at a press conference to announce a new initiative to improve journalism education, Hodding Carter, head of the Knight Foundation, said: The great dirty secret in journalism and journalism education is that we are inherently conservative in the way we do things. Preach it, brother. Yes, change is feared and resisted. He also said: What has struck me is not that things are changing but that the change is cascading... We are in the midst of an absolute revolution. Amen. animal sex clip
The initiative is funded by Carnegie and Knight and involves five universities: Northwestern, USC, Berkeley, Harvard, and Columbia. It will place journalism students at news organizations to work on reporting projects without the pressure of deadline or bottom lines -- this to be led by my friend, Merrill Brown. It will help establish programs in specialized journalism (e.g., science and engineering journalism at USC). And it will create a task force to speak out on issues in journalism. animal sex clip
Oprah and the terrorists
: Debbie Schlussel, conservative columnist and Howard Stern fave, writes a pretty damning indictment of Oprah's mollycoddling of terrorists: Schlussel says Oprah wants us to understand mass murderer Mohammed Atta and understand a Palestinian human bomb and not mention that the murderers in Beslan were Islamic but instead came from the mountains. Maybe if you gave the terrorists cars, Oprah, they wouldn't be mad anymore. animal sex clip
The future of newsgathering
: Ernie Miller sends us to a really wonderful post by Lenslinger, a TV cameraman who is watching himself be replaced by... us. He covers a media event (planned implosion of building; film at 11) and sees that "a new breed of onlooker rose up to record it": I speak not of the swarthy camera pirate with his heavy lens and professional press pass, but of the mild mannered college professor with the brand new camera-phone, the smiley housewife with the shiny Sure-Shot, the cocksure columnist with a thesis already brewing in the laptop. They are more than erstwhile tourists. They are the rabid bloggers, the plugged-in pundits, the citizen press corps - whip-smart individuals whose very nature drives them to post pictures, links and commentary on the sudden collapse before the dust even finishes settling over once fertile ground.animal sex clip
From Tripod Row, the view’s indeed a little scary. Squinting civilians peering into tiny lenses, breaking bedrock principles of camera-handling with every unnecessary sweep and pan. No one expected the democratization of media to be pretty, but the attendant lens abuse is enough to break this cinematographer’s heart. But that ship has sailed, a nautical phrase as apparently outdated as Wide-Medium-Tight and Steady Sequenced Video. What use are lofty production values to the herky-jerky nature of today’s internet footage? Does proper composition really matter when the end product is viewed on a one inch screen? Of course it does - but only to us broadcast dinosaurs. This new hybrid breed of digital scribe gives little thought to such matters, instead relying on quick image uploads and push-button publishing to make up for his lack of camera acumen.animal sex clip
It’s enough to make those of us in the media scrum to talk of the End Times.... I could quote the whole post but instead go over to his site and read the rest. animal sex clip
Of course, this isn't just about TV video. This is about photography and audio and text and reporting. He's going through the ding-ding moment I went through, as a print guy, a few years ago. animal sex clip
I always said that when I was a critic, the only thing that separated me from the audience was that I got the stuff early (and couldn't skip over the bad parts). But now bloggers get books and tapes for review before release. So nothing would separate me as a critic from them as an audience; we're all us. animal sex clip
What separates a professional journalist from a journalist? Oh, that's what journalists of all stripes are fretting over. Training? Maybe. But if we could learn how to hold a camera steady or get a quote right, anybody could. EThics? Oh, I dislike that one; we all have ethics, even if don't have them enshrined in codes, and often those with the codes are the first to forget the essence of their ethics. Money? That's starting to flow to the just-plain people. animal sex clip
We all have the tools now. Ding, dong, the priests are dead. Jittery video at 11. animal sex clip
: MORE: Matthew in Australia watches the coverage of a woman charged with drugs in Bali and notes, similarly: I mean, how many consumer-level video cameras and flipped-out LCD screens did you see hovering above the sea of journalists alongside the bulkier, broadcast-quality stuff? A lot! There was one Indonesian guy in a red shirt who, not weighed down by carry bags, lenses and boom mikes, was running after the police car with a video camera no larger than the size of his palm. And he was the only one keeping up! That's pretty full-on. animal sex clip
May 26, 2005
Defame this
: Oriana Fallaci has been charged in Italy with defaming islam and ordered to stand trial (though she lives in the U.S. and says she won't go to Italy for this farce, this attack on freedom of speech and thought). A judge has ordered best-selling writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci to stand trial in her native Italy on charges she defamed Islam in a recent book.animal sex clip
The decision angered Italy's justice minister but delighted Muslim activists, who accused Fallaci of inciting religious hatred in her 2004 work "La Forza della Ragione" (The Force of Reason)....animal sex clip
In "La Forza della Ragione," Fallaci wrote that terrorists had killed 6,000 people over the past 20 years in the name of the Koran and said the Islamic faith "sows hatred in the place of love and slavery in the place of freedom."animal sex clip
State prosecutors originally dismissed accusations of defamation from an Italian Muslim organization, and said Fallaci should not stand trial because she was merely exercising her right to freedom of speech.animal sex clip
But a preliminary judge in the northern Italian city of Bergamo, Armando Grasso, rejected the prosecutors advice at a hearing on Tuesday and said Fallaci should be indicted.animal sex clip
Grasso's ruling homed in on 18 sentences in the book, saying some of Fallaci's words were "without doubt offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith." Is there an Italian law against defaming America?
animal sex clip
Another damned conference
: I might have had conference envy with all the power gathered at the D confab but after reading this numbingly repetitive blather from panels about media and blogs, I'm glad I missed it. What these big guys need is an unconference where, as Dave Winer says, there is no panel, everyone is the panel, and the smart people in the room get to speak and not just listen.animal sex clip
: LATER: Bob Cox is properly pissed at Ana Marie Cox for biting the hand that fed her fame with blanket snarking at bloggers, of which she was one -- the most notorious one, in fact. animal sex clip
How many is many?
: Carl Bialik, the Wall Street Journal's number's guy, attacks the question of how many blogs there are. As Rex says, the bottom line is pretty much "a lot." animal sex clip
The estimates of the number of blogs worldwide ranges from 10 to 60 million. But the definition of blog varies, as well it should, since blogging tools are merely publishing tools and can be used to say and do most anything. The percentage of active blogs varies, as well it should, since some people have no lives and post all the time (and it's really hard to post when you do get a life, by the way) and others use it to update when updates are warranted and others try it out and move on. The estimates of the audience vary, as well they should, because there is no way to accurately count that today. animal sex clip
Bialik leaves out one important factor that must not be ignored: RSS. My Sitemeter stats say I had 340k pageviews in March but my server stats said I had 996k and the difference is mostly RSS (and things such as the page views I generate when I publish posts). But, of course, RSS is complicated because just because a feed is downloaded doesn't mean it's read (and what does it mean to read a feed vs. reading a post?). animal sex clip
If all this is only about bragging rights, it doesn't matter. Brag away. Debate at will. Who cares? The power of blogs is not about the total or the biggest (that so old-media-think, so mass) but instead about the rising volume of individual conversations. animal sex clip
BUT... if this is about advertising, then we do need to establish real numbers:animal sex clip
: We need to count those blogs who want to be counted -- those who say they are publishing. animal sex clip
: We need to put cookies up to get unique user counts and behavior (frequency) and demographics. animal sex clip
: We need to find the means, technical and definitional, to count RSS (probably at the post level). animal sex clip
: We need to measure the unique value of citizens' media, finding measures of influence and conversation-starting and such. (See the discussion Ross Mayfield and I had with others over, in Ross' words, the need to move past measuring impressions to measuring the impressed.) This is the unique value of citizens media -- it's about relationships, conversations, influence, not just about the coincidence of a word on a page (see: Google). animal sex clip
: We need to create the means to aggregate, share, and analyze this data so ad hoc networks of blogs can be found. animal sex clip
: We need an open-source ad call (I'll keep beating this drum) so that advertisers can serve and analyze ads on those networks. animal sex clip
: And then, so we can brag in Ad Age and get Carl Bialik to poke at the bragging, we will want to have some sense of the ad revenue and audience volume to this subset of blogs: namely, those that have a reason to be counted. animal sex clip
Flush
: The Washington Post -- appearing to rally 'round its corporate cousin, Newsweek -- plays up a story today about allegations of "Koran abuse" (what an amazing piece of newspeak that is) at Guantanamo. As near as I can tell, there's nothing new in this: the prisoner allegations have been around for sometime; this is a repetition of them through more documents. This will yield another round of political, media, ideological, and ethnic nya-nyas on both sides. Meanwhile, I wonder, is anybody in Iraq preparing a report on beheading abuse and Muslim-Muslim murder, otherwise known as "human abuse?"animal sex clip
May 25, 2005
The fruits of fame
: I change my career and get publicity and blog but what really impressed a (soon-to-be-former) coworker of mine is that I got a shout-out from Amanda Congdon. animal sex clip
Moving
: Dean Wright, Merrill Brown's successor as editor of MSNBC.com (who has done a good job there), is moving over to Reuters to head up development of its consumer services -- that is, news directly to us, not through client media outlets. As we ask how we're going to get commodity news in the future, this is one answer. The AP will have a different answer -- pulling together the news of its correspondents and members. I'm not sure which model will be better business. animal sex clip
The future of magazines?
: Mark Glaser has a roundtable discussion about the future of magazines with Jay Rosen, Joan Walsh, Nina Link, Samir Husni, David Abrahamson and me. animal sex clip
: Also, Heather Green called this weekend for a chat that ends up on her Business Week blog. I rambled (not thinking it'd end up as a transcript) but rambling is nothing unusual for me!animal sex clip
Mötley suit
: Motley
is suing NBC for banning them after Vince Neal used the F word: In the latest twist in the broadening battle overdecency standards, the glam-metal band Mötley Crüe filed suit against NBC yesterday. The suit states that the network violated the group's free-speech rights and weakened its sales by banning it after Vince Neil, the lead singer, used an expletive on the air in a Dec. 31 appearance on "The Tonight Show."animal sex clip
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Los Angeles, accuses the network of censoring the band to mollify a Federal Communications Commission that has been increasingly quick to levy steep fines for broadcasting indecent material on television and radio. Well, too bad that the suit's absurd. NBC choses what to put and not put on the air -- it's called editing or producing, not censoring. Now I suppose one could argue that it's not their air, it's our air, so the band could sue to get on -- but, of course, that's ludicrous; that would end in every American getting 15 minutes of fame. Or I suppose the band could sue the FCC for creating this chill -- except the FCC didn't fine FCC and, besides, the F came out in the "safe harbor" for nastiness after 10 p.m. Still, I'm glad to see anybody go tilting against the windmill (read: broadcast tower) that is the FCC. animal sex clip
Behind the silence
: I have two incredibly stupid reasons for the radio silence here: (1) I'm doing too many months' worth of expense accounts, (2) I'm cleaning too many piles of old memoes out of my office. But it has to get done (here's why). I'll be back in a bit. animal sex clip
May 24, 2005
Whereabouts
: Wildly busy day. Good wine. Exhaustion. Later. animal sex clip
The moderate revolution
: I know it's too much to hope for, but how I do hope that we have the stirrings of a moderate revolution against the fringers. animal sex clip
The end of the filibuster standoff is a start. We know it worked because it pissed off people on both sides. animal sex clip
Next comes an effort to find a middle ground on stem cell research -- following the quite moderate opinions of Americans. animal sex clip
The majority of Americans, according to this poll, favor choice in abortions but compromise is rising there as the Democrats talk about parental notice, as the Supreme Court considers its first abortion case, and as John Podhoretz says that all a Republican has to do to win is to act prolife, even if insincerely. The real importance of Podhoretz's column is that a moderate Republican could win the nomination with just a little tapdancing.animal sex clip
I do believe that Congress jumped the shark. We see how pissed off Americans are at Congress. animal sex clip
There is a real opportunity for the middle to take the lead. I believe a moderate candidate who could make it through the primaries would win the White House. The only question is who.animal sex clip
Unshopping at the nonmall
: I've made many futureshock predictions that were bull and I thought this was one of them:animal sex clip
About five years ago, I sat with the boss and with Bob Lessin, damned smart VC, and predicted that some big retail outlets would be replaced by showrooms where you could see the merchandise that you could then buy online. The idea was that Amazon is efficient but isn't always satisfying -- you want to touch the stuff. And maintaining retail and local warehouse space and above all inventory may be convenient -- but it is expensive and inefficient. So for big-ticket items (furniture, cars, electronics) a showroom could beat a store. And in the post-mass-market world, where I believe that unique or niche merchandise will make a comeback (eBay v. Walmart), a showroom would be far more effective than trying to blanket the country with inventory. animal sex clip
Even I didn't fully believe what I was saying. It was theoretical, speculative, perhaps bull. animal sex clip
But now here's a story in The New York Times reporting on just such a showroom for online sales: new shopping complex in Ohio will try to combine the convenience of online stores with the hands-on experience of browsing at a mall.animal sex clip
Sometime near the end of 2006, the complex, called Epicenter, is scheduled to open in Columbus at the Polaris Fashion Place. The nucleus of Epicenter will consist of two parts - the Buypod, a hand-held electronic device, and electronic kiosks located throughout the mall.animal sex clip
Under the concept, customers will enter the mall and register their credit card information, which will then be put into their Buypods. As customers browse merchandise, they can use their Buypod - which, as the name suggests, looks something like an Apple iPod - to scan the labels of items they want to buy.animal sex clip
Although a small number of items will available to take home, most orders will be sent directly to the warehouse, where they will be filled and shipped. The electronic kiosks will print receipts and can be used to cancel orders, if needed.animal sex clip
According to Anthony Lee, Epicenter's chief executive, Internet and catalogue retailers can use Epicenter to establish a place where their customers can feel, and in some cases try on, merchandise. The Epicenter design also offers the low overhead and reduced need for sales staff that online and catalogue retailers are accustomed to. Retail has just begun to explode. And this will, in turn, continue to explode local advertising and media. animal sex clip
May 23, 2005
Stupidity averted
: So the filibuster meltdown option is avoided. And a good thing it is. I don't think the peopel would have tolerated political war and a congressional shutdown. Powerline is despondent; Hugh Hewitt is wondering whether to be depressed but the gray mood is bipartisan: Avedon at Atrios doesn't like it. Kos calls it limited victory. I call avoiding stupidity victory, myself. I call moderation virtue. animal sex clip
Nonblogger snarks
: Romenesko keeps trying to insist he's not a blogger but he sure sounds like one -- a snarky one at that -- with this link to the post below that mentions a Museum of Television and Radio Media Center event: Don't you hate it when journalists get together and refuse to share their brilliant ideas? Well, the rules aren't mine. But I wonder whether they would have gotten leaders of big organizations there with the promise that a snarky blogger (like, oh, Romenesko) was in their midst. I'm as transparent as we get -- so see-through I could wear the emperor's new clothes and you wouldn't notice (think about it) -- but even I have to acknowledge that sometimes, people get together to just talk without worrying about how they say what they say. This wasn't journalists meeting with officials off the record; this was journalists meeting with journalists about the business of journalism. And I will respect the rules of engagement. So I blogged my own thoughts, not those of others. When a commenter snarked below about a blogger attending an off-the-record session, I said that I have off-the-record meetings every day. They're called conversations. I didn't blog every meeting with my boss and we're both journalists. I don't blog every conversation with my wife because, well, as my father says, His mother didn't raise any idiot sons (think about it). I didn't blog about my new professional endeavors before it was time. Though I know that it may be hard to imagine, even for a bloggers, Some of life is simply off-the-record or, if you prefer, not for blogging or publication. animal sex clip
On the air
: On MSNBC's Connected at 5p re Newsweek's new unnamed sources policy. animal sex clip
: Imagine my surprise to see SF Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein sitting with Monica Crowley going over scripts; he's subbing for Ron Reagan tonight. animal sex clip
New business models for news
: The discussion that the news industry -- print, broadcast, online -- needs most today is not more blather about who and isn't a journalist but instead about how to pay for journalism. animal sex clip
I was lucky enough to go to a roundtable about the future of news last week at the Museum of Television & Radio. It was off-the-record, so I'm not supposed to quote anyone. But I was making notes for a catalogue of new business models for news. Some of this is about saving money -- for audience and ad revenue to big media are falling and will continue to fall. But some of this is about opening up and taking advantage of what's happening in technology and media to expand, to explode. Here's are a few buckets, each broad and abstract; please add more and fill them up with specifics: animal sex clip
: New sources: See the post below about gathering news from many sources, including those outside the newsroom. Whether it's hyperlocal news around the corner or news in far-off places where reporters can't go or assigning the entire audience to help with news (tell us your stories of waste about health insurance), there is tremendous untapped knowledge and energy "out there." News organizations cannot afford to expand staff but this is how they can expand coverage. Or to look at it another way: This process of the people publishing news will go on anyway; the question is whether the news organizations can get involved and add value with content, promotion, and education. animal sex clip
: Replacing anchors with authentic voices: Is it still worth the money to have expensive anchors on TV? They supposedly added trust to the news, though Dan Rather burst that balloon. They also supposedly put a human face on the news -- a voice. But they became so homogenized that they added no voice at all; they became background noise, Newsak. So imagine instead having various people giving us news with various perspectives. I don't know whether that would work; we still like consistency and this, too, can create expensive stars (see: Bill O'Reilly). But I believe that the explosion of news will lead to a lessened dependence on high-priced faces.animal sex clip
Look at it another way: Does every newspaper across the country need its own movie critic? The movies are the same coast-to-coast. The information we need to decide whether to go is the same. So why not plop in Roger Ebert? Or why not plop in reviews by your funny neighbor who knows the good stuff? animal sex clip
Ditto sports columnists. Ditto political columnists. Get rid of the voices on high and get more voices from down on the ground and you'll improve the conversation and save money.animal sex clip
: Death to commodified news: As an industry, we waste a fortune manhandling the same commodified news everybody already knows. But it's more than just a waste; it drags us down into an oppressive sameness. We all got overdosed on Schaivovision and Popevision and Bridevision. The programmers behind the cable news networks were afraid not to blanket those stories because their competitors were blanketing them. But by that act, they made themselves the same as their competitors, they turned themselves into commodities. Breaking away from the pack is extremely difficult and risky, but every news outlet needs to have a unique voice and value or it will get lost in a crowd. animal sex clip
Similarly, newspapers and their audiences would be best served concentrating on what they do best: local, local, local. If they gave us the local news that no one else could gather and report, they'd be worth more to us. But this, too, is a hard habit to break: not sending the 15,001st correspondent to the political conventions, not editing the already edited AP report, not printing the stock tables....animal sex clip
: Death to the masses: One-size-fits-all news was a product of the mass market and the mass market was an aberration brought on by a scarcity and thus hegemony of broadcast channels which, in turn, led to a scarcity of newspaper choices. The internet explodes the mass market and brings the press back to its natural state of choice. So does it still make sense to print those stock tables -- costing, say, $1 million a year in paper and ink -- when only a small portion of the audience still uses them? Can you afford to let those readers go -- on the off chance that they do cancel their subscriptions; can you afford not to? In the old mass-market days, you put a little of this and a little of that in your product to serve everyone, in little ways. Now maybe it makes more sense to have separate products -- news, sports, entertainment, lifestyle, business -- to serve those audiences in big ways... and serve targeted and efficient advertising as a result. The transition would be painful, in some cases fatal, but this is where the audience is now heading online. animal sex clip
: Anytime, anywhere, anyhow: There is no such thing as a medium anymore; it's all media, it's all multi. The public demands its news -- rather than waiting for it to be served -- anytime, anywhere, to serve any interest or need. So news organizations must do just that. Thus a newspaper needs to gather and share the news it knows anytime (which, I have learned, is far more difficult than it appears) via online and audio and video and the internet and phones (also not easy). Thus TV networks have had to hire people to write and package text online. And they need to be able attach sponsorship (or payment) to all this (and that's not easy, either: just try selling sponsorship of BitTorrent or ad on RSS). animal sex clip
: Charity: NPR is growing on the strength of its news and its audience contributions. I do believe the audience will pay for news in certain (limited) circumstances. And, yes, that does present a new bucket of church-v-state issues (e.g., how come we can get money only to report on why there isn't global warming vs. why there is?). But the same issues of journalistic integrity prevail (the answer is that you can pay to support reporting but not conclusions). animal sex clip
: Quality will out: One way or another -- with their eyeballs or their checkbooks -- the public will support quality, unique reporting. See 60 Minutes. See NPR. I have to believe that the best way to find news business models is to give people unique value and quality. Sounds obvious, doesn't it?animal sex clip
: Join the conversation: This is the most important one. The conversation that is news will be going on with or without you -- so better to be withit: Better to find the ways to stand in a position to gather and share news. So, for example, look at RSS feeds as a way to get your content out there and not only drive traffic back to your site and brand but also to be consumed and sponsored in a distributed manner. animal sex clip
: MORE: It so happens that The Wall Street Journal asks a bunch of smart media people about new business models for media today: free links here and here. Comments later.animal sex clip
My favorite line from the first Journal story: "The newspaper of the future is going to be a coalition of niche products," says consultant S.W. "Sammy" Papert III. animal sex clip
Big radio on small radio
: NPR's Morning Edition did a segment on podcasting this morning and they interviewed me (sitting under William Paley's bookshelf at the Museum of Television and Radio, by ironic chance). They edited out plugs for podcast pioneers Dave Winer and Adam Curry (I swear it, Dave, on a stack of RSS manuals!). Take a listen here. animal sex clip
Editor as news gatherer
: I think we're getting ready to define a new job description of the journalist. animal sex clip
One of my favorite soundbites -- oh, I got a million of 'em -- is that we in the press need to think of ourselves not just as news creators but also as news gatherers, collecting news from inside and outside our newsrooms and sharing it wherever, whenever, and however people want. animal sex clip
Or to say it in another obnoxious soundbite: We need to stop being controllers and start being enablers. animal sex clip
I read Stephen Baker's post on the Businessweek Blogspotting blog recounting lunch at a Korean restaurant (note outsourcing irony) with a media exec who argued that we will soon the rise of a new kind of newsperson. They see it as a new kind of reporter. animal sex clip
I think it's a new kind of editor who gathers and sifts and vets and shares and guides and goads -- and does all that not just with beat reporters but with beat citizens: readers turned writers. animal sex clip
Baker and lunchmate think these people will be higher paid because of their multimedia skills. As editors, that may be true (though multimedia skills are today the birthright of the young: no big deal). As reporters, I think, however, that there will not be a scarcity of talent and eagerness out there -- witness the blogs -- and so payment for reporting could decline. From their lunch: He said that the day of the classic "beat reporter," is coming to an end. Replacing the legions of beat reporters banging out their stories in newsrooms, he predicts, will be a far smaller group of so-called multimedia journalists. These people will be higher paid. They will know how to harvest the knowledge of experts and citizen reporters alike, and will fashion new journalistic products out of various media. They will have entrepreneurial skills and many will create their own brands....animal sex clip
In many ways, the trend he described to me (as we struggled with metallic chop sticks in a Korean eatery) mirrors what is happening in the software industry. There, many of the commodity jobs are moving offshore. The winners are those who can put together entire projects, who know how to manage cross-cultural teams, who understand the business and can deal with customers.animal sex clip
More and more, the winners in the industries I'm seeing are those who--inside or outside a company--can run their own show. (Cue quotes from Tom Friedman's The World Is Flat.) animal sex clip
: So imagine the job description of a real city editor of the near future. Duties include:animal sex clip
1. Aggregate, organize, and highlight the best of newsroom and citizen media: good reporting, good story ideas, new viewpoints, public pulse points. animal sex clip
2. Make assignments inside and outside the newsroom: You need someone to cover a school-board meeting where there's a controversy brewing, you might allocate one of your staff reporters. For another meeting, you might go out to bid with citizen information entrepreneurs, picking someone who has your trust because she has training and a track record. For another meeting, you know that the event will be covered by citizens anyway -- some with a stated viewpoint -- and you'll aggregate those. But you'll make sure that what needs to be covered gets covered. The insiders will be on salary. The outsiders may get a payment or may be part of your company's ad network or may just get promotion that benefits them when they sell the ads. animal sex clip
3. Identify, train, and support reporting talent: What you have done in the newsroom, you will need to do outside. You will find promising and motivated citizen reporters and put the best into a company training program -- or take the best from journalism schools that now serve the industry and the public with citizen training. On an ongoing basis, you will work with this distibuted reporting base to improve their work. You won't be able to edit every line of every report to which you link, but you will try to educate them -- and earn their respect as they earn yours. animal sex clip
4. Share news anywhere, anytime, in any medium: You will package and enable news gatherers to share news as it happens in and through any appropriate medium -- text, photo, audio, video, conversation, shared resources. animal sex clip
5. Converse: It's important to stay in conversation with the community: Get out, meet people, read their blogs, read their comments, respond to them, be a member of the community. animal sex clip
Come to think of it, I know such a journalist. She's called the Barista. animal sex clip
May 22, 2005
Follow the money
: Two interesting jobs in PaidContent.org's listings, always a good source for industry intelligence:animal sex clip
: Yahoo: Manager of mergers and acquisitions. Lots of action there. animal sex clip
: Motorola: Director of business operations, iRadio: "Motorola is planning to make the mobile phone the center of a new music experience, combining high-speed internet access with Bluetooth technology to offer music anytime, anywhere.. The new service, called iRadio, will allow consumers to easily beam radio streams and personal collections to a nearby stereo system, whether in the car, home, or office."animal sex clip
: Coca-Cola: Interactive brand manager: Proving that interactive is about branding. animal sex clip
Some lesson in free speech and responsibility
: A high-school principal in Georgia has gone after the school's paper and now the students have blog telling their story. An AP story reports: This school year's final edition of a high school student newspaper was killed and the school's journalism class was eliminated after the principal said the paper highlighted negative stories and a lack of thorough reporting. Randolph Bynum, principal of Pebblebrook High School in Cobb County, cut the class citing a teacher shortage and the need to keep more popular courses like cosmetology. But he also criticized the paper for negative stories at the expense of articles more favorable to the school's image, and for a lack of thoroughness in its reporting of stories on teen pregnancy and vandalism in the school parking lot. Go to these PDF links and you will see that this is an impressive newspaper that, indeed, covers hard issues like teen pregnancy and gambling and even anti-evolution textbook stickers. animal sex clip
The principal, like any bureaucrat, is apparently allergic to transparency -- which is all the more reason why the student body and the community are well-served by this very good newspaper. animal sex clip
There could be no better lesson in the need for journalism. animal sex clip
But there's some hope: The school got a new principal last week. Here is her email address: Regina.Montgomery@cobbk12.org. animal sex clip
Journalists and bloggers alike should come to the aid of these good students and their teacher -- and free speech -- and send email to Ms. Montgomery. I have. animal sex clip
Congress sucks
: That's what I love about blogs: No mincing, dicing, slicing, saucing words. Congress sucks. That pretty much says it. They're going berserk over their pandering grandstanding and not paying attention to business and the American people hate them for it. animal sex clip
Sunday, David Brooks goes after not the left fringe or the right fringe but the wimpy middle for not bringing sense to the senseless and averting a nuclear meltdown: As we descend down this path, the moderates are being serenaded for their valiant efforts to find a compromise. I'm all for valiant efforts, but why do the independent types always have to be so ineffectual? Why do they always have to play their accustomed role: well-intentioned roadkill?animal sex clip
The answer, to be blunt, is that some of the moderates are moderates out of conviction. They do have courage. But many moderates are simply people who feel cross-pressured by different political forces, and their instinctive response is to shrink from pressure. They lack spirit to take risks, to actually lead.animal sex clip
These 12 senators believe the looming nuclear showdown will be terrible for their institution. They had a deal within their grasp that would have headed this off, a deal that was just and fair: up or down votes for nominees and respect for minority rights. But as I write, they haven't been able to put it together.animal sex clip
No more sweetheart press for the responsible middle. Put up or shut up. animal sex clip
May 21, 2005
'What you call serendipity, we call links'
: Rafat Ali and I were at the same high-powered but off-the-record roundtable on the future of news media yesterday. It was a great session, I thought. And Rafat had one of the best lines of the day, which -- because he just blogged it himself -- I can now quote. The news people were voicing a commonly expressed concern that in this world of ours, without packaged, edited front pages and news-show rundowns, and home pages, for that matter, the reader/viewer/user loses serendipity: that is, the story you won't look for but an editor will tell you. Rafat's wonderful reply: what you people call serendipity, we call links. What you people call the homepage, we call Bloglines. What you call indepth-reporting, we call blogging a story to death. animal sex clip
Snarkers
: Thanks for all the very nice comments, below, regarding my career move. Since I'm a lifelong wage slave and a chicken, it's especially appreciated. But blog will still be blogs and so there are snarky comments even on this topic (I can imagine some of these commenters snarking about pictures of a bloggers' new baby: "Ewwww, looks like Michael Moore!"). The snark: So now you're a full-time hypester eh?animal sex clip
A classic case of jumping on a bandwagon without knowing what's really going on. But we live in an age of dilettantes and lightweights. 15-second attention spans demand 15-second pundits and prognosticators. I can just see Gladwell writing a retrospective on this craze in a year or two... Well, actually, I'd say that Gladwell is just a craze. animal sex clip
The fight for "freedom"
: There are a few doozies in yesterday's architectural review by Nicolai Ouroussoff of the new International Freedom Center designs set for the World Trade Center. But the experience soon becomes Orwellian. The center's upper-level galleries will be arranged in a spiral around the central light well. Under the current design, visitors will have to ride an elevator to the top and then walk back down along the spiral on a so-called "Freedom Walk." This kind of manipulation seems silly, especially in a museum that celebrates freedom. By echoing the ramps down into the memorial pools, the downward spiral implies a direct connection between the cataclysm of 9/11 and a global struggle for "freedom" - a bit of simplistic propaganda. (An early rendering of the Freedom Center that was circulated at the development corporation's offices included an image of a woman flashing a victory sign after voting in the recent Iraqi elections; that image has been replaced by a photo of Lyndon B. Johnson and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) Oh, I would say there is a most direct connection between "the cataclysm of 9/11 and a global struggle for 'freedom.'" We needn't put quote marks around "freedom" -- which is as good as saying "so-called freedom" -- when it comes to freeing people from the opression of the Islamic fanatics who did this deed and ruled Afghanistan and threaten people throughout the world. We need to fight for freedom from their terror and tyranny. That's not about "freedom." That's about freedom. In what world is extolling freedom is "Orwellian" "propaganda?" animal sex clip
And I'm offended by the substitution of a photo that more than symbolizes freedom in Iraq. That is precisely the photo that should be in a museum about freedom, damnit.animal sex clip
The review ends with this: What is missing at ground zero is a sense of humility. This is something that cannot be remedied by reducing the scale of a building. We should refocus attention on what matters most: remembering the human beings who were lost at ground zero, while allowing life to return to the void there. The rest is a pointless distraction. I don't understand the use of the word "humility" any more than I understand the use of the words "Orwellian" or "propaganda" in this setting -- and apparently no better than the critic understands the use of the word "freedom" in this context. Is "humility" a proxy for the notion that we should ask why they hate us? Let Bill Maher build that building. Or is this the notion that we should stand humbly before the sacrifice of so many good and innocent lives lost? In that case, I agree. animal sex clip
May 20, 2005
On the air
: On Kudlow at 5:45p ET and Hewitt at 7:20p ET today and on NPR Monday morning. animal sex clip
Onward
: I just quit my job at Advance.net to do lots of new things -- a damned career smorgasbord -- all related to changing news and to citizens' media:animal sex clip
: I'm going to work on content development About.com, on a consulting basis, working with Martin Nisenholtz at The New York Times Company, whom I've known and respected for more than 10 years now. What excites me today is the meeting of mainstream media and citizens' media and About at The New York Times Company is just that. But this is more than an old-media property buying into new-media (as I first saw it); it's more than smart diversification (which the news business needs). About.com can be a platform for distributed media and I'm eager to explore all the great things that will come of that. But first, I'm looking forward to working with the amazing army of About guides, who have created a great resource of content and service online. I'm doing this part-time, as a consultant, so I'll be free to continue blogging and doing other things, including:animal sex clip
: I will act as editor in chief of a new news start-up founded by Upendra Shardanand (ex Firefly, Microsoft Passport, AOL, and Time Warner) and a sterling team. More than a year ago, when Upendra first described his idea to me, I lurched at it. I was so determined to work on this that I gave up plans to start my own blog company. The start-up remains in stealth mode -- this is the first public mention of it -- but you'll hear more about it soon. (And we are, of course, hiring engineers.)animal sex clip
: I got a chance to write the new media curriculum for the new City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, collaborating on it with Dean Stephen Shepard (former editor-in-chief of Business Week), Merrill Brown, Judy Watson of CUNY, and more faculty there. I will continue to work with CUNY as the school launches and I can't wait until fall 2006, when the school welcomes the generation of students who will shape the future of news. animal sex clip
: I am hanging out my consulting shingle to take on a few good projects. The first: I'll continue to work with Advance.net on a magazine/online assigment. I've joined a few advisory boards. And maybe I can even get paid for the occasional speech. I am now Buzzmachine LLC.animal sex clip
: I have a book I'm finally ready to start writing and I'm thinking about writing some of it here on this blog. animal sex clip
: And, of course, I will blog -- blog more, I hope. Blogging has changed my career and opened all these doors. I've learned a tremendous amount (or think I have) about the future of the press thanks to the conversation I've had here with you all. So thank you. I will continue the conversation and continue learning and changing my old ideas about media until somebody pries my laptop off my cold, dead lap. animal sex clip
Because I'll be working with the Times Company, I'll usually refrain from blogging about their business and policies, just as I did when it came to Advance's business at Conde Nast and its newspapers (apart from the occasional plug for hyperlocal... and I swear, I never fed Gawker any Conde elevator reports). In the interest of full disclosure, this is why I did not blog about (or answer a few interview requests regarding) The Times' new TimesSelect premium service. So have I sold out to The Man? Of course, I have. I did that more than 30 years ago, when I went to work for my first newspaper. You should always judge what I say about big media in the context of fact that big media bought the suit I wear (and a damned nice suit it is, thank you). animal sex clip
Now allow me to say a few things about Advance.net and my boss, Steve Newhouse, who is a real visionary and strategic thinker in the press and new media. It's because of Steve's enthusiasm for community that we opened our newspaper-related services to interactivity more aggressively than any other publisher I know. I'm proud that a great staff at Advance -- led by my friend and colleague from Entertainment Weekly, Peter Hauck -- built the top news sites in every one of the company's markets. I'm also glad that I got to work on the start of CondeNet's Epicurious, Concierge, and Style with Rochelle Udell, Joan Feeney, and other creative editors. I have the highest respect for the Newhouse family and their company and I'm delighted that I'll continue to work with them. animal sex clip
Thanks for indulging me my little bit of personal news. Now back to blogging....animal sex clip
Where is the outrage? (continued)
: Tom Friedman says we are not demanding outrage from Muslim leaders and the White House over Muslims murdering Muslims. I would add the press and the liberal establishment to his list of those who should be expressing outrage. And, yes, we need to express outrage -- and surely will express outrage -- at the same time about prisoner abuse that went beyond naked pictures or toilets to death in today's Times report from Afghanistan. animal sex clip
"Look," he says the White House (and others) should say, "Newsweek may have violated journalistic rules, but what jihadist terrorists are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan - blowing up innocent Muslims struggling to build an alternative society to dictatorship - surely destroys the Koran. They are the real enemies of Islam because they are depriving Muslims of a better future. From what I know of Islam, it teaches that you show reverence to God by showing reverence for his creations, not just his words. Why don't your spiritual leaders say that?animal sex clip
Sci-cry
: Over my years as a critic, one lesson I learned is that sci-fi fans are, uh, sensitive. I've never been forgiven for giving Babylon 5 a bad review. I got zapped every time I was unPC (or is that unSci?) enough to say Trekkie instead of Trekker. And I hurt a Star Wars fan who wants to explain that I was mean to make fun of geeky people who give up homes, civilization, and showers to spend weeks living on line to see a movie. Lighten up, guys, it's not the end of the universe. animal sex clip
The new imperialism
: Blogs continue to spread across big media. A few German blogging friends email to report that NetZeitung, the pioneering net-only newspaper, is taking up blogging. animal sex clip
May 19, 2005
Media links
: I'm at a media talkfest Friday and often get asked for blogg links; here's a link to some. Plus my media category. animal sex clip
News without newspapers?
: Doc Searls comes out with on-the-spot insights that abstract and summarize big trends with the clarity a new pair of glasses brings and he does it with the ease and frequency with which Howard Stern farts. animal sex clip
At the Syndicate conference this week, I was standing next to Doc and a fellow media executive who was saying what all us media executives say all the time: We need to find the business models that will support quality journalism. animal sex clip
Without missing a beat, Doc says, "You need to come up with business models that support news without newspapers."animal sex clip
Exactly. You needn't take that as a literal prediction -- though some will -- to find truth and value in that. We need to look at a world in which support from classified, retail, and national advertising will leak or pour out and in which the audience goes wherever it wants to go. animal sex clip
We need to rethink about newsrooms as news-gathering (not just news-creating) operations that bring together the community's news and share it wherever, however, and whenever the community wants. And, yes, we need to think of new business models to support this.animal sex clip
Calling all cars
: Wow. animal sex clip
Go look at the amazing ChicagoCrime.org, which takes feeds of data on crimes throughout the city and plots them on GoogleMaps by neighborhood and type and even provides RSS feeds for crimes reported on every police beat and block. animal sex clip
When I started in this online biz, lo, more than a decade ago, this was one of the blue-sky ideas we always heard would be so cool. Well, once data is in a data base and somebody can get a feed of it and parse it, the cool is possible. animal sex clip
This is the hyperlocalest of hyperlocal news. [via Lost Remote]animal sex clip
: And I shouldn't be surprised that the genius -- and I mean genius -- behind this is Adrian Holovaty, who's changing media and the world from Kansas. animal sex clip
When editors and politicians are customer-service representatives
: I spent the afternoon yesterday with Craig Newmark, always a delightful trip. And during various conversations, he unfailingly makes reference to customer service. People usually react as to a punchline when the founder of the incredibly successful Craigslist says he is founder and customer service representative. But for Craig, it's not a joke. It's a creed. animal sex clip
Rory O'Connor does a great job capturing that view from Craig's Q&A at the Personal Democracy Forum: What’s behind its amazing, word-of-mouth success? “We provide a simple and effective community service,” explains Newmark. “We are persistent about basic values, and establishing a culture, systems and structures of trust and goodwill.”animal sex clip
Sounds simple enough. So why isn’t there a “Craigslist for Politics” yet? According to Newmark, it’s because there’s a lack of trust in our political system. “At Craigslist, we view customer service as a high expression of moral values,” he noted. “People are looking for institutions that reflect their values. Our political parties are not service organizations.”animal sex clip
Of late, Newmark added, he has been looking into media rather than politics. “News operations must also deal with issues of morals and trust,” he said. “We need better, more moral and trustworthy information.” So what would a Craigslist for news be? It would be about trust. It would be about service. animal sex clip
The story is the story
: Amazing how anything can split and anyone can spit along party and ideological lines, even about Newsweek's incompetent and dangerous journalistic mistake. I was talking about that with Jay Rosen just last night: about how his criticism of Newsweek's error has earned him attacks from the left. animal sex clip
Isn't this story about journalism, not ideology? For some, though, nothing is not about ideology. animal sex clip
David Brooks does well summarizing the ideological perspectives and pissing on the Newsweek affair. ...Every faction up and down the political spectrum has used the magazine's blunder as a chance to open fire on its favorite targets, turning this into a fevered hunting season for the straw men.animal sex clip
Many of my friends on the right have decided that the Newsweek episode exposes the rotten core of the liberal media....animal sex clip
Meanwhile, the left side of the blogosphere has erupted with fury over the possibility that American interrogators might not have flushed a Koran down the toilet....animal sex clip
This, too, is unhinged. Would it be illegal for more people on the left to actually be happy that a story slurring Americans may turn out to be unproven?...animal sex clip
Then I click my mouse over to the transcripts of administration statements and I can't believe what I'm seeing. We're in the middle of an ideological war against people who want to destroy us, and what have the most powerful people on earth become? Whining media bashers. Whining media bashers? How about dissatisifed media consumers? How about disappointed fellow journalists? How about unhappy fellow Americans? animal sex clip
Brooks is right to say that it's silly and offensive to bash Newsweek and not bash the fanatical murderers who used this report as an excuse to kill. animal sex clip
But I think he's wrong not to bash Newsweek himself, not to also criticize the magazine for making such an irresponsible error. animal sex clip
Brooks spends a paragraph saying that he used to work at Newsweek and he likes those guys and doesn't believe they're commies and that's very nice. animal sex clip
But by not criticizing the report, the net message of this otherwise spot-on column is that press people defend press people, that we circle our wagons around our screw-ups, that we stick together first. Especially today, with the press' trust in tatters, that is the wrong message. animal sex clip
What we should be saying is that we criticize each other first and we accept those criticisms first because we want to get to the truth together. animal sex clip
When the still-surprisingly-employed Dan Rather screwed up with his memoes -- and after my readers here forced me to comment on that as a media story not a political one -- Rosen and I were pointed to as liberals who criticized Rather along with the conservatives. That may have been apparently factual but it was the wrong conclusion: We were journalists criticizing journalists because we should.animal sex clip
What a relief
: No more stories about dorky Star Wars losers without lives waiting in line for a damned movie. animal sex clip
May 18, 2005
Fight! Fight!
: Denton v. Roshan.
: UPDATE: The full Denton report.animal sex clip
It's a joke
: NY Times critic Alessandra Stanley gets all PC about Two and a Half Men, a sitcom I happen to like. If she were merely unamused, that'd be one matter. But she's offended in a way that's laughable in itself: It's funny when people get all PC and haughty about jokes. She calls it not merely unfunny, in her view, but "hateful" and "ghastly" and why? Because Charlie Sheen shtupps: But actually, the show is alarmingly anachronistic: it has been decades since a libidinous cad seemed harmless or endearing; in the age of H.I.V. and S.T.D.'s, Charlie's heedless promiscuity seems like a health risk, not a hobby. Get rid of drunks, fat people, and the stupid in sitcoms; they're not allowed to be funny and we're not allowed to laugh at them. We're supposed to disapprove instead. And if the women aren't all role models -- if there's a mom, as there is in this show, who's screwed up and screwed up her sons, that' is "misogynistic." animal sex clip
It's a sitcom. It's a joke. Sorry you don't think it's funny. I do. But don't be making me into a hateful, ghastly, STD-spreading, mysogynist if I laugh. animal sex clip
Free pays
: The Wall Street Journal has appointed Carl Bialik -- aka the Numbers Guy who does a great job tearing down funny math in media -- to a new post as the free-content editor. For months now, WSJ.com, under nice-guy Bill Grueskin, has been sending links to freed-up content to bloggers and it has worked so well they've now instituted it as a job. animal sex clip
Where is the outrage?
: Tom Friedman asks the right question and brings the right perspective to the Newsweek nonstory story: If that could cause riots and deaths and condemnations and fatwas, then why are we not seeing such outrage over Muslim killing Muslim in Iraq? That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.animal sex clip
Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia....animal sex clip
The best way to honor the Koran is to live by the values of mercy and compassion that it propagates. : LATER: This is what gives me hope: Saudi Jeans says Friedman is right. animal sex clip
Dan Rather dodges bullet
: When he left his anchor chair -- or rather was pushed overboard -- CBS said that Dan Rather would continue as correspondent for 60 Minutes Wednesday. Now that's canceled. Is Dan canceled? Nope. He'll contribute to 60 Minutes Sunday. animal sex clip
Whereabouts
: Sorry I've been away, friends. Been crazed in meetings all day. Big changes on the horizon; more as soon as possible. Back blogging as soon as possible. animal sex clip
May 17, 2005
Bad timing
: What a rotten week Jon Stewart picked to take off. What he could do with Newsweek....animal sex clip
You vill do vhat I say
: That's the punchline; see the joke here. animal sex clip
The real stories
: Tom Evslin, one of the smartest guys I met in a decade online, branches out from his blogging on telecom and business and writes about the news and how news media often miss the real story: UN oil-for-food Programanimal sex clip
Press Take: This is a story about whether Kofi Annan’s son improperly used his influence to benefit from the program. Story is over when Volker Commission apparently can’t find proof of this.animal sex clip
The Real Story: An enormous and extremely important program was mismanaged in a way which let Saddam Hussein divert billions meant to feed his people into arms and palaces (apparently more of the latter than the former) and bribes for government officials worldwide. This may be the biggest case of misdiverted resources in the history of the world. Incompetent management of this program was certainly a contributing cause to the Iraq War. The same people are still “managing” the UN and all of its could-be-important programs today.animal sex clip
My Rant: The issue of Annan Jr.’s venality is irrelevant compared to the issue of gross mismanagement. Somehow Annan Sr. got a hall pass for mismanaging on an historic scale because his son wasn’t caught with his hand all the way into the cookie jar. He needs to be fired for incompetence....animal sex clip
Disrespecting The Korananimal sex clip
Press Take (BBC): The most important news in the world on Wednesday were the charges that an American at Guantanamo Bay desecrated a copy of the Koran. This was reported as sufficient cause for violent outbreaks throughout the Muslim world.animal sex clip
The Real Story: The Koran is being desecrated by those who carry out terrorism in its name.animal sex clip
My Rant: Symbolic tolerance is important but punishing some pieces of paper is not on the same scale as beheading hostages..... Tom needs to spin this off into a blog of its own. animal sex clip
Newsweek, continued
: Jay Rosen says the only source we had in the Newsweek story was Newsweek itself. And that was not a reliable source, as it turns out. Under these conditions, it is imperative that journalists in the United States raise their standards for reliability, because the consequences of being wrong--for themselves, for their profession as a whole, and for others far removed--are graver. The most difficult part of raising standards is not to figure out what to do that might improve reliability, but to admit that standards weren't as high as they could have been in the first place.animal sex clip
For professionals who have achieved a certain standing this is hard because it requires some humbling first: We aren't as good as we need to be. But the alternatives are worse. Instead of improving reliability, the press can simply become more timid, reducing risk by increasing its own toothlessness. It can fall back into formalisms of the "he said, she said" variety, and never really try to figure out the truth. It can switch the mission to entertainment, and select news that way. There is always denial that anything is different today, a favorite among the crumudgeon class.animal sex clip
The Periscope item in the May 9th issue of Newsweek is a creature from an earlier climate of credibility: when a single-source story was good enough; when anonymous was okay as long as you trusted "your guy" at the Pentagon or the DA; when the consequences of being wrong were not as great, as instant, or as global; when the game of being first--which always meant more to journalists than anyone else--could go on as if it had intrinsic value to the public. A good analysis. animal sex clip
A nation of sopranos
: Broadcasting & Cable reports that the so-called American Family Association is going after condom ads and "the immorality, violence, vulgarity, profanity, etc., which the media is forcing on our children." They don't want condoms, they don't want erections, they don't want things that cause erections, they don't want gay people, they don't want romance. They want to castrate the nation. animal sex clip
More = merrier
: Antonia Zerbisias, a leading columnist for the Toronto Star, is now a blogger. [via Doskoch]animal sex clip
May 16, 2005
Live, from New York, it's next fall!
: NY Times TV critic Virginia Heffernan liveblogs the NBC upfronts. animal sex clip
RSSSSSS
: Newsgator buys FeedDemon (which is my RSS reader of choice) timed for the Syndicate conference tomorrow. Om and Steve have the news. animal sex clip
More media on media
: I'm scheduled to appear on PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer tonight on the Newsweek mess. Here's what I have to say. animal sex clip
: Tim Porter: When is this self-destructive obsession by the press with "scoops" and "exclusives" going to end?...animal sex clip
I don't need to tell you that overall press credibility - regardless of platform - continues to slide. A Pew Research Center study (PDF) released in April found that 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing printed in newspapers. Newsweek fared almost as badly. Nearly 40 percent don't believe what they read in the magazine and in a section of the report devoted to political news, only 10 percent said they learned about politics from Newsweek, a 50 percent drop from year earlier....animal sex clip
There is a deeper issue behind the reliance on unnamed sources: Values.animal sex clip
Reporters and news organizations wield anonymity as a tool to gain what many of them see as their most prized possession - a scoop, an exclusive, a "The-Daily-Blatt-has-learned" story....animal sex clip
The obsession with being first was so strong that the wire services or networks routinely crowed (or at crow) if they beat the competition by minutes.animal sex clip
That day is gone. News today is a continuum. It flows ceaselessly from producer to consumer and, more and more, back again to the producer. It can be stopped and recorded for consumption later, it can be sampled at any hour of the day or night, or it can be ignored altogether, as it increasingly is.animal sex clip
This news environment needs a new set of values. I outline some pairs of old and new values last month. Here's the pair that applies to the Newsweek debacle:animal sex clip
Old Newsroom Value: Competition. The obsession with being first leads to a buffet line of bad journalistic behavior - deal-cutting, anonymous sources, lop-sided stories (with follow-ups often receiving lesser play than the original, errors, out-right chicanery and plagiarism.animal sex clip
New Value: Context. Thoroughness serves readers, not sources. Information, with more reporting, becomes education. Transparency trumps anonymity. animal sex clip
God.com
: At the Personal Democracy Forum, I'm in a session on God online with Hugh Hewitt, Steve Waldman of Beliefnet and Halley Suitt. animal sex clip
Steve says that that recent polls show that religion is bigger than politics online. He says that religion spreads like porn online because of privacy and anonymity. He quotes Hugh's book on the reformation (see the post below) and how printing spread reformed religion and quoted a recent headline of his: What if Luther had had email?animal sex clip
Hugh says that whenever he talked about religion on the air, the ratings jumped. At Salem Broadcasting, they want to own the right-center religious market and he says that if he were a Democrat (straight line) he'd hire religious bloggers. Again, see the post below: Engage.animal sex clip
Asked about the Schiavo case, Hugh says that it will be a watershed moment and probably affected the papal conclave. animal sex clip
I ask Hugh what he would advise the liberal, reformed religious to engage. He says the first and most important thing is to "lay down the hostility" and not "hiss' when conservative religion is mentioned. animal sex clip
Hugh says that pastors who are constrained from talking politics in the pulpit because of their nonprofit status are not constrained on the web and should start web sites and blogs. animal sex clip
Steve says the divide in the election was not a God gap but a church attendance gap (see the link to the CBSNews piece in the post below). But he says it right: It's not as if this means the other side is not religious; Americans are religious. It means they have a different view. animal sex clip
On Connected
: I'll be on MSNBC's Connected at noon on the Newsweek mess. animal sex clip
: LaShawn Barber has a fresh batch of Newsweek links.
: Nick Gillespie is steamed.
: Austin Bay says this is the press' Abu Ghraib.
: Conor Friedersdorf says this is a tipping point for press coverage of the war on terrorism: the tip being that coverage has an impact on the world and on lives. animal sex clip
: Here's Reuters (my emphases): Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan were skeptical Monday about an apparent retraction by Newsweek magazine of a report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran and said U.S. pressure was behind the climb-down....animal sex clip
Newsweek said Sunday the report might not be true. That's why Newsweek's nonretraction-retraction is going to continue to cause problems and is just as bad as CBS's nonretraction-retraction in the Rather story, except this one is dangerous. They should have said that they retract the story because they do not have any reason to know that it is true. We are not in the business of reporting what might be true, what could be true if only we know more. We are in the business of reporting what we know is true. Aren't we? animal sex clip
:Ankle Biting Pundits are asking you to name the scandal.animal sex clip
The Reformation, continued
: The Reformation isn't over yet. We're witnessing the struggle between liberalism and authoritarianism in American cultural and political life and in the world. Or maybe we're witnessing the backlash. I wrote about this essential difference in religious and thus cultural and political worldviews and how they affect the current debate over so many issues here and here. In Sunday's New York Times, there are two good pieces contemplating the continuing reformation:animal sex clip
: In the book review, Mark Lilla of the University of Chicago defines liberal theology: It includes a critical approach to Scripture as a historical document, an openness to modern science, a turn from public ritual to private belief and a search for common ground in the Bible's moral message. He recounts the rise of liberal Protestantism in Germany, then Britain and America, and next its fall in Germany after World War I and into Weimar. And he says it is falling here now: After the last Great Awakening at the end of the 19th century, liberal theology made steady gains in all the mainline American churches, and by the 1950's it represented the consensus within Protestantism, and was also softening the edges of American Catholicism and Judaism. Yet it, too, has now collapsed. Over the past 30 years we have seen the steady decline of mainline faiths and the upsurge of evangelical, Pentecostal, charismatic and ''neo-orthodox'' movements -- not only among Protestants but among Catholics and Jews as well. Politics played a large role in this, especially divisions over the Vietnam War and the cultural transformations since the 1960's. But the deepest dynamics were again spiritual.animal sex clip
It appears that there are limits to the liberalization of biblical religion. The more the Bible is treated as a historical document, the more its message is interpreted in universalist terms, the more the churches sanctify the political and cultural order, the less hold liberal religion will eventually have on the hearts and minds of believers. This dynamic is particularly pronounced in Protestantism, which heightens the theological tension brought on by being in the world but not of it. Liberal religion imagines a pacified order in which good citizenship, good morals and rational belief coexist harmoniously. It is therefore unprepared when the messianic and eschatological forces of biblical faith begin to stir.animal sex clip
The leading thinkers of the British and American Enlightenments hoped that life in a modern democratic order would shift the focus of Christianity from a faith-based reality to a reality-based faith. American religion is moving in the opposite direction today, back toward the ecstatic, literalist and credulous spirit of the Great Awakenings. Its most disturbing manifestations are not political, at least not yet. They are cultural. The fascination with the ''end times,'' the belief in personal (and self-serving) miracles, the ignorance of basic science and history, the demonization of popular culture, the censoring of textbooks, the separatist instincts of the home-schooling movement -- all these developments are far more worrying in the long term than the loss of a few Congressional seats. Before I find the wrath of home-schoolers and others coming down on my head, see this as an expression of the other side of religion, the side we don't hear much about today. Religion is not all fundamentalist; religion is liberal, too. It's not an oxymoron. animal sex clip
: And on the op-ed page, Nicholas Kristof argues that religous liberals are not but should be talking to religious conservatives on their own terms, verse for verse. animal sex clip
His jumping-off point is the "explosive" book by former Newark Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong. This book is long overdue, because one of the biggest mistakes liberals have made has been to forfeit battles in which faith plays a crucial role. Religion has always been a central current of American life, and it is becoming more important in politics because of the new Great Awakening unfolding across the United States.animal sex clip
Yet liberals have tended to stay apart from the fray rather than engaging in it. In fact, when conservatives quote from the Bible to make moral points, they tend to quote very selectively. After all, while Leviticus bans gay sex, it also forbids touching anything made of pigskin (is playing football banned?) - and some biblical passages seem not so much morally uplifting as genocidal....animal sex clip
Bishop Spong, who has also taught at Harvard Divinity School, argues that while Christianity historically tried to block advances by women, Jesus himself treated women with unusual dignity and was probably married to Mary Magdalene....animal sex clip
Some of the bishop's ideas strike me as more provocative than persuasive, but at least he's engaged in the debate. When liberals take on conservative Christians, it tends to be with insults - by deriding them as jihadists and fleeing the field. That's a mistake. It's entirely possible to honor Christian conservatives for their first-rate humanitarian work treating the sick in Africa or fighting sex trafficking in Asia, and still do battle with them over issues like gay rights.animal sex clip
Liberals can and should confront Bible-thumping preachers on their own terms, for the scriptural emphasis on justice and compassion gives the left plenty of ammunition. After all, the Bible depicts Jesus as healing lepers, not slashing Medicaid. OK, I'll confess that I've derided some as jihadists but I've not fled the field. And it's not as if Kristof himself isn't politicizing the hell out of this. But he's right in the notion that underlies what he says: Liberals have religion, too. Liberals can call on God just as conservatives do. And they (we) should. animal sex clip
: My sister, the Rev. Jarvis, called yesterday and told me she'd gone through media training and I'm glad. I've said here before that I've lamented liberals' forfeiture of the pulpit of TV and media. animal sex clip
During their recent fit of Popevision, the networks called on Billy Graham's son as if he represented all Protestantism. There wasn't a liberal theologian to be found. animal sex clip
That, I have said, is mostly the fault of the liberals, who disdained the populist pulpit of pop culture. animal sex clip
It's about time the liberals get media training and find themselves on bookers' list. It's about time that liberals engage the religious conversation rather than leave it. animal sex clip
: This morning, I looked out from my spot in the church choir on a sparsely populated congregation. It's the week between Mother's Day and Youth Sunday in our church and so, as my wife observed, some folks wanted a break. And that would be disappointing -- it's always better to see full pews -- but I, too, want a break sometimes. In fact, I left a more conservative church for many reasons: its homophobia primarily but also because it measured devotion, it measured Christianity by "commitment," which they counted in the hours spent at church. animal sex clip
I don't count devotion that way. animal sex clip
And I don't like it when those of us who don't count devotion that way aren't counted as religious in America. animal sex clip
In the media, "religious" is becoming synonymous with conservative, devoted, fundamentalist, pick the word. And that's not just media's fault. That is the fault of those of us who view religion differently -- the liberal, the reformed -- but who do not stand up to be counted, because it's not what we religious liberals do. I don't proselytize. I don't give public witness. I don't testify. I don't think it's my business to impose my religious views on my neighbors. I treasure our secular nation that protects religious freedom. That's just my view. animal sex clip
And so I'm not counted. The religiously liberal and liberally religious are not counted. animal sex clip
Some may say I'm too casual with my faith. I used to be more casual: I left the church for many years when I was appalled at the petty politics I saw there and had not yet grown to put that in its proper place. I returned when I had children -- so they could have the same choice I had -- and ended up singing in the choir, heading up the board, teaching church school, even giving the occasional sermon. But while I was gone from the church, I was still religious; my attendance proved nothing. And now that I'm back, I'm still more casual than others. animal sex clip
The casually religious are religious, too. The liberally religious are religous, too. We need to be counted, too. But I suppose we can't be counted if we don't stand up. animal sex clip
: MORE: A few weeks ago, I did a truly terrible job trying to address this when I linked to what CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer called the "devoutness divide." What I was trying to say then was what I just said: casual counts, too. animal sex clip
: One of the sessions I'm looking forward to attending at the Personal Democracy Forum Monday is on religion on the web, with Halley Suitt, Hugh Hewitt, and a founder of Beliefnet. Hugh and I have parried on religion from our different perspectives and I look forward to continuing the conversation in person. animal sex clip
New truths of new media
: Steve Safran at Lost Remote lists his 10 truths of new media. I agree with most of them. animal sex clip
May 15, 2005
The joyous chicken
: Amanda Bennett, editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, welcomes Dan Rubin to his new post as official blogger with this: Reader Carey O'Donnell of Haddonfield urged me to plunge the paper more heavily into that online fray.animal sex clip
"Bloggers are your readers," he said over drinks at the Happy Rooster. More important, he said, they are the readers of the future. Don't shun them, he said, and don't ignore them. Embrace them. Both sides will benefit. Well said, reader. animal sex clip
But she can't resist a little snipe at the bloggers: For all the hand-wringing about breaches in journalistic ethics, we have high standards of verification, truth-telling, testing and triangulating information that the freewheeling blogosphere could benefit from.animal sex clip
The world of bloggers, which often rests on opinion, assertion, untested assumptions and unwarranted conclusions, is developing its own system of checks and balances, based in large part on diverse audiences, near-instant response times, and the ability to quickly incorporate new evidence. Uh, well, the bloggers and readers often think that news people often "rest on opinion, assertion, untested assumptions and unwarranted conclusions." See the post directly below. At this good moment starting a good new feature with a well-respected journalist, did you have to make this an us-vs.-them moment? Couldn't you resist the impulse? animal sex clip
But she adds: Soon, I'll be telling you more about how we will be entering into community conversations with our readers through new Neighbors publications and local home pages. Many more of us - including me - will be blogging. Reporters, artists, photographers, columnists will be appearing more online as well as in print. Come watch it happen. Watch, we will. animal sex clip
Oh, and by the way, what heartens me most in this is that the grand tradition of journalism -- hanging out for drinks at places with names like the Happy Rooster -- is not dead. animal sex clip
When the story gets in the way of the truth
: What a terrible lesson in journalism: about the danger of unnamed sources, about the risk of rushing a story, about the cynicism of gotcha journalism, about the damage a wrong story can do.animal sex clip
Newsweek quotes an unnamed source alleging that the Koran was desecrated at Guantanamo Bay and anti-American riots break out in Afghanistan, causing at least 15 deaths and other damage not so easy to add up. animal sex clip
Now Newsweek says, oops, nevermind, oh so sorry, it appears we could be wrong: Their source now isn't so sure he saw that report in documents that Newsweek apparently did not confirm. Joe Gandelman has a good summary; Michelle Malkin has many links.animal sex clip
This mistake cost people their lives, put the lives of our soldiers in the Mideast at risk, damaged the American position in the effort to defend itself and spread democracy, and damaged the already tattered reputation of journalism. animal sex clip
And to what end? animal sex clip
If the report had come from a source who had the balls to stand by what he said, if the alleged event had been witnessed, if it had been confirmed by independent authorities, I'm not sure what the imperative to report would have been: Why did we need to urgently know this? What public good is served? If it were absolutely true, that might be one matter but...animal sex clip
Given that none of those if's was true -- the informant did not have the balls, the event was not witnessed by a source, the event was not confirmed independently -- and given the knowledge that such a report could only be incendiary, then why report it except to play one of two games: animal sex clip
Show-off -- in which the journalist delights in knowing something no one else knows and wants to tell the world before everyone else does, even if it's not assuredly true. animal sex clip
Gotcha -- in which the reporter think he has exposed something somebody wanted to hide. animal sex clip
An incident such as this should force us to ask what the end result of journalism should be. Is it to expose anything we can expose? Is it to beat the other guy to tell you something you didn't know?animal sex clip
Or is it to tell the truth?animal sex clip
And if you don't know it to be true, is it reporting? If you rely on unnamed sources and unconfirmed reports, is it journalism? animal sex clip
To sum up journalism as "tell the truth" sounds so damned simplistic. But that is what journalism is about, isn't it? Or shouldn't it be?animal sex clip
I'm not saying that Newsweek lied. But they didn't know the truth before they said what they said. They put the gotcha scoop ahead of the truth and ahead of nothing less than the good of mankind. animal sex clip
: See also these posts about journalism and truth: here, here, and here. animal sex clip
And Dan Okrent on anonymous sources. I agree with him that sometimes, anonymous sources are necessary to report that which you know to be true.animal sex clip
: Here's a GoogleNews search for "sources."animal sex clip
: UPDATE: In The Times, Kit Seelye says that Newsweek is not retracting: But Mr. Whitaker said in an interview later: "We're not retracting anything. We don't know for certain what we got wrong." And neither do you know for certain what, if anything, you got right. That's the problem. animal sex clip
: LATER: Alan in the comments raises an important consideration. He says that the deaths are not themselves Newsweek's fault but the fault of -- my words -- fanatics who would kill in the name of religion. animal sex clip
The double negative
: Armando at Daily Kos gets all bitchy at Jay Rosen for praising Dan Okrent. Dan's sin, as near as I can tell, is that he dared to see the side of the critics of the liberal newspaper and criticize the paper too much -- except as it refers to coverage of the runup to Iraq, in which he didn't criticize the paper enough (note that he didn't try; he didn't deal with things that came before his time). animal sex clip
Kos is true to form and true to its own mission: It is an advocacy site that sees the world through it's blue lenses. Rosen, on the other hand, is a media criticism site and he sees the world through his green eyeshade. animal sex clip
There's also this little gem: And Rosen has a lot to say about Jayson Blair. But this line was particularly stupid to me:Ultimately Daniel Okrent will have had more influence on the New York Times than the notorious Jayson Blair. I mean really. Jayson Blair was a third string reporter, how much influence did Jayson Blair have on the Times? Well, Jayson Blair caused the firing of the two top editors at The New York Times and the hiring of aforementioned public editor and two major, profession-changing reports from The Times on improving the professionalism and trust of journalism. I won't stoop to Armando's level and call what he says "particularly stupid," but I will call it clueless. animal sex clip
Two words: naked vlogs
: From PaidContent.org's job listings: Playboy Enterprises: Director, Program Acquisitions & Commissionsanimal sex clip
The family that podcasts together...
: The Wilson family podcasts. animal sex clip
May 14, 2005
I second that motion
: Jay Rosen writes to praise Dan Okrent not only for the way he did his job but for the way he created the job of public editor at The New York Times. I second everything he says. animal sex clip
Dan did more than change The Times, he changed journalism. He reversed the flow in the pipe and showed the good journalism that can come from conversation. animal sex clip
What made him different from other ombudsman was that he did not just try to represent or explain or slap the paper; he made the public an equal in the conversation and he pushed both sides to do better.animal sex clip
His will be a tough act to follow. animal sex clip
Read Jay's tribute. animal sex clip
(Dan and I were colleagues and pals at Time Inc. and afterwards.)animal sex clip
Fight! Fight!
: Wolcott vs. Podhoretz vs. Wolcott. animal sex clip
: Winer vs. Curry. animal sex clip
Big city blogger
: The Philadelphia Inquirer has assigned reporter Daniel Rubin to the blog beat but he's going to do far more than write about blogs: He has started a new blog at the paper as a gathering place for local blogs and blog news; he will bring the voice of bloggers into the paper every way he can imagine; he will try to turn the newspaper into a conversation; and he will cover news via blog (he's making the Personal Democracy Forum Monday his maiden voyage). animal sex clip
Dan's a good guy. I've spent long conversations with him on various media and blog stories. He is a topnotch reporter and in the process of covering these worlds he was bitten by the blog bug, bad. I expect great things from him. In his intro post, Dan says: For those fretting about the death of serious journalism, know that we at the Brontosaurus on Broad Street care, and are working hard for those who share our values. animal sex clip
Blogging the election... Iran's, that is
: Hossein Derkhshan and others have started a very impressive blog to cover the upcoming Iranian election at Iranscan.net, in cooperation with Open Democracy. Hoder is also working on a new and attractive Persian news site called Rooz. animal sex clip
Not your grandmother's PBS
: A PaidContent job listing for PBS is surprising on two levels: "The Director, Premium Online Games & Content must be both an artist and an entrepreneur." First surprise: Games can be good for you. Second surprise: Premium means making money. Third surprise: Entrepreneurial means making money is not evil. animal sex clip
Gillmor's world
: The first sprout of Dan Gillmor's Citizen's Media is peeking above the ground with Bayosphere. It's not fully evident what it's going to be yet but it will be. animal sex clip
Personal Democracy Forum
: Last chance to change your plans Monday and come to the Personal Democracy Forum. It's a heckuva list of people who'll be there -- and this year, they did a better job of making it a more bipartisan list. So come on down. animal sex clip
To a crispy, golden brown
: Parody is hard but Huffington Toast pulls it off. animal sex clip
May 13, 2005
A blog without the links
: Forgot to mention that The Week magazine has a new site with more content. I still wish that they'd add links. animal sex clip
Armed pork
: I find the whining by both sides over Rumsfeld's base closings to be most unseemly: animal sex clip
Hey, every American industry has gone through restructuring. There's no reason why the U.S. military should not restructure given the changing nature of its business. And I don't give a damn whether the base in your state or your state or your state closed, senator or congressman. animal sex clip
It's one country. It's our money. It's your waste. Enough. animal sex clip
Meeting Chairman Powell
: I just met Michael Powell. animal sex clip
The former chairman of the FCC was at the Aspen Institute forum I've been attending; he's a senior fellow there. So I knew I'd see him. animal sex clip
And I'll confess I was a bit nervous about meeting him. Or perhaps embarrassed. animal sex clip
I've been hard on Powell on this page over his role in the FCC's indecency blitzkrieg. And I certainly stand by that criticism. animal sex clip
But I also agree with him on his other unpopular stance, media consolidation. I respect where he stood on the First Amendment -- before he led the indecency stampede. I think he gets the importance of letting technology grow on its own (he has said that the best thing FCC did for wi-fi was nothing, or words to that effect). I've seen him speak at a conference and knew he was smart and softspoken. So it's not as if I was meeting someone I could ignore. Powell's not someone to be dismissed. I was eager to meet the man and hear from him. animal sex clip
And I didn't flatter myself to think that he'd paid any attention to what some blogger had snarked about him. But Larry Kudlow had told me that he'd brought up my criticism to Powell on the air. So I didn't know: He could have decked me. animal sex clip
I decided to make it clear from the first that I'd blogged about him, from the other side. Twice, I said I was a blogging gnat who'd buzzed about him and he dismissed that, waved the point away like a bug in the air, and said I was just one of many. animal sex clip
The Aspen rules are that you can't quote someone with attribution without permission and I didn't intend to blog conversations with Powell. I will say that when we discussed indecency, I said that the FCC and Congress have no cover to defend the First Amendment; if they do vote for free speech, they can be accused of voting for smut. And he didn't disagree. I will also admit that in a conversation about our favorite gadgets, I told about using my Treo to blog about the FCC's fine against Howard Stern from the choir loft of my church. He noted the irony of that. And otherwise, we talked about technology changing society and how the next generation thinks and about favorite gadgets and about telecom and video games and media consolidation. animal sex clip
I like him. He's smart and easygoing and charming. We disagree about indecency (though I suspect we're not as far apart as it may seem) and agree about other issues. And I'd like to hear more from him. animal sex clip
Is there any news in this post? No. But I figured that given our history, I couldn't meet Michael Powell without telling you. animal sex clip
Schmodcast
: I wanted to hear the debut of Adam Curry's new PodShow on Sirius but my damned satellite service (I am both a customer and stockholder) has apparently broken its internet streaming tonight (great timing) and Curry's ownsite is also broken (great timing II). animal sex clip
So I'm making a damned fool of myself sitting in the car in the driveway with my laptop (ain't wi-fi amazing; can we say that enough?) listening to Adam's choices of podcasts and blogging about it. The good news: Some are musical, with neat mashups; that's the best part by far. The bad news: I just heard a really boring Canadian podcaster (no, that is not redundant and shame on you for thinking so) and Madge Weinstein, who is about as entertaining as and sounds like Mark Harris (of Martha Ray and Howard Stern fame). It's not a fair sample, since I have to run in and out of the house and turn the car on and off, but it is a mixed bag. animal sex clip
: Oh, and I wish they had links to all the podcasts played to both give credit and to let me listen to more if I want. Metadata, man, metadata. animal sex clip
: Curry ends by playing his own Daily Source Code podcast... apparently all 40 minutes of it. animal sex clip
Whereabouts
: Driving back home this afternoon. Blogging later. animal sex clip
How advertising really works
: Howard Stern told great and pathetic stories this morning about trying to get a job when he got out of college: radio guys who listened to his horrible audition tape and told him he was the worst announcer they'd ever heard, a close-miss at becoming a ladies' buyer at Bloomingdales, and stints with advertising: animal sex clip
He got a job as a media planner at Benton & Bowles. Math skills? they ask. Excellent, he says. And then he arrives at work and knows he's in over his head. He's working on Planter's Peanuts. The boss whips out a calculator and sheets of numbers and tells him to find all the Jewish newspapers in the country -- Jews like peanut oil for cooking, he says -- and calculate the CPM and then divide. In Howard's head, he shrieks: "Divide? DIVIDE?!?" He comes in on Saturdays and then Sundays -- "you don't have to wear a tie on Sundays," somebody tells him (which reminds me of the old working-at-Disney joke: "If you don't come in on Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday"). He can't do it. He quits with no notice. animal sex clip
Note that this is how money is divvied up to the titans of media: Some kid out of college who, if he's lucky, can divide, plans where to spend an advertiser's bucks. animal sex clip
Howard's father then got him an in a the B&B film department as the AV geek but he got fired before he was hired because he'd quit his last job there without notice.animal sex clip
And then he got a job in sales at a tiny radio station, where the boss, who wasn't wearing a shirt, told him to sell advertising and get in-kind trade: Howard went to a Chinese restaurant and convinced the man he had to advertise on radio and he comes back to the office with hundreds of Chinese dinners at the ready when he finds authorities taking documents. He goes back to the Chinese restaurant and tells him never to advertise on radio.animal sex clip
This is how media works. animal sex clip
Measured
: I've been at the Aspen Institute for a day and a half sitting with smart people figuring out ways to get ethnic media its due with advertisers. There are some issues in common with online and citizens' media: trying to navigate advertising agencies as "gatekeepers of risk," as one of the participants called them, and agencies' fetish for measurement and performance. Kevin Riley, a marketing exec at IBM, gave advertisers a caution I love: The less measurable it is, the more valuable it is. Clark emphasized that he's not against measurement; who can be in his biz? But the point is that if advertisers and agencies wait for something new -- blogs, vlogs, podcasts, RSS, and whatever's next -- to be fully measurable, they'll miss the opportunity to get in on the buzz of something new while it's still new and still cheap. animal sex clip
May 12, 2005
Breaking the codes
: In his very good coverage of l'affaire Spokane at PressThink, Len Witt points to a plethora of codes of journalistic ethics. animal sex clip
Methinks the volume of codes of ethics is, itself, a symptom of a problem. Doth we protest too much? Are we overcomplicating it? Are we overcompensating? animal sex clip
Doesn't it pretty much add up to this: Don't lie. Don't sell out. animal sex clip
Close enough for Current
: Current.TV blogger Robin Sloan reacts to my post on tolerance for lower-quality video opening up new content possibilities: You know, I remember asking Current broadcast facility manager Brett Kotheimer what video quality we'd consider a minimum threshold for VC2. His answer surprised me: I expected him to say, "Oh, standard DV with good lighting" or something. Instead he said (and I paraphrase): "Hey, as long as there's a recognizable image, it's potentially useful."animal sex clip
Brett is serious about running a facility that uses professional expertise to make sure Current's signal is rock-solid and broadcast-quality -- and puts it to work in service of all kinds and qualities of video, from the sharpest in-house field reports to the roughest (but, perhaps, most compelling) VC2 submissions.animal sex clip
Again: Bring on the webcams, baby. It's the content that counts. animal sex clip
Damn
: Treonauts reports that the Verizon Treo 650 will not have EVDO high-speed data. Damn. Guess I'll stick with Sprint.animal sex clip
The satire tag
: Big, old media needs to get a sense of humor. Straight out satires have been taken as real by the big guys twice recently:animal sex clip
: When a fake Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on Howard Stern's show and proposed blowing up the moon -- with the fringe benefit of ending women's PMS and bitchiness -- Joe Scarborough on MSNBC took it seriously and lectured Arnold about sexism. Now, the guy's a good Schwarzenegger impersonator but still, there were scores of clues in the bit that it was a bit. animal sex clip
: The Swift Report -- a good and often very funny satire site -- put out a press release from the Coalition for Traditional Values upset over Laura Bush's off-color jokes and TV-watching habits. Now, of course, what makes that so funny is that it's so close to the truth. But it was just a joke. Nonetheless, Rush Limbaugh, MSNBC, and Drudge fell for it.
[via Lost Remote]animal sex clip
Alex Beam says: "Poor dears. Don't they know the Golden Rule of the digital age? On the Internet, no one can hear you lying."animal sex clip
Lying? How about joking, Alex? Nobody was trying to lie. They were trying to tell a joke. But big, old media just didn't get it. animal sex clip
Maybe we need to add courses in remedial humor to journalism schools. animal sex clip
Or maybe big, old media just needs to lighten up. Big, old media apparently has been too depressed lately from falling audience and advertising. Big, old media needs to get a big drink. Or big, old media needs to get laid. Something. animal sex clip
Google goes local and more local
: Google buys localized social networking tool Dodgeball. A founder celebrates. Their teacher celebrates. Rex Hammock says they didn't acquire a tiny company with two talented founders; he said they acq-hired.animal sex clip
Google moves past organizing the world's content to creating the world's content (Blogger) to storing and serving the world's content (video) to organizing your own content (desktop ap) to organizing your town (local) to organizing your friends (Orkut and now Dodgeball). animal sex clip
Just now, I said to Michael Powell at lunch (more on that later) that what we really want to do is Google our lives. animal sex clip
: ADD: Yelvington.animal sex clip
The tofu demographic
: Blogads adds to its helpful clumpings of citizens' media with the liberal blog network. animal sex clip
The wrong Bolton
: The problem with John Bolton as UN Ambassador is not, as it turns out, that he is critical of the UN but that he is an ass. George Voinovich says he won't support Bolton because: ``Bolton would have been fired if he worked for a major corporation,'' Voinovich said as the panel opened final debate on the nomination. Bolton is ``the poster child for what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be,'' Voinovich said. But I do believe we need someone critical of and skeptical about and demanding of the United Nations in that post. The notion that we had to put someone in the UN who loves the UN is ludicrous in a politically correct way, especially as the UN proves to be such a mess (see any angle of its involvement in Iraq, from the war to oil-for-food scandals to abandoning the nation). The UN is a mess and we should be in there demanding reform and results. So we need a reformer, not an ass. animal sex clip
: UPDATE: Following the Bloomberg story above, the AP reports that Voinovich will vote to pass the Bolton nomination to the full Senate: the political compromise. animal sex clip
: TO CLARIFY: In response to the comments, I thought this was clear but I'll make it clearer: I'm not saying he's an ass; I have no idea or way to know whether he's an ass. I'm saying the process is saying he's an ass and that's why it has appeared at various moments that he may not get approved. What I'm really saying is that we should not lose sight of the notion that whether it's Bolton or not, what we need is a critic and skeptic of this flawed organization. If the right person gets rejected just because he's an ass, then the process is an ass. Is that clearer?animal sex clip
Nuculer Washington
: I passed through Washington this week and was amazed at all the political commercials on the filibuster and the nuclear option: commercials we're not seeing elsewhere in the country because they're not addressed at us (even if we are supposed to be in charge) but instead to both the political and media hives. Wendy Melillo writes about this at AdFreak and says it looks like campaign time in D.C.animal sex clip
Take over the news
: Now this is the right attitude: The BBC issues essentially an API to the news. At Backstage, you can take feeds of BBC news and remake and remix it into new applications and products and share them with the world. [via Lost Remote]animal sex clip
May 11, 2005
Blogvision
: Jon Stewart lampoons the blog segments on cable news (Crooks & Liars has the video) and, as always, he's right. There's plenty to make fun of: Wow. By reading the blogs on TV, the 24-hour cable channels have combined the visual pizzazz of a text file with the deep insight of a 90-second cable segment. And about the blogcasts I'm so proud of (and I'm not sure what to think about them showing Ed Cone instead of me... jealousy or relief): Wow. That's the same cutting-edge technology that powers VoyeurDorm.com. And on giving their show hosts blogs: Kudos to MSNBC for finally using blogs to give voice to the already-voiced. Can't argue with any of it. Can only laugh. animal sex clip
So why are the cable news networks embracing the blogs? Rob Corddry says it's because of terror of this new animal in the jungle.... and besides, those CNN blog chicks are hot. (Well, he thinks they are.)animal sex clip
But seriously, folks... If you're going to try to jump on the -- Stewart wink -- blogwagon, how should you do it? Should you do it?animal sex clip
CNN has the chicks reading the geeks. MSNBC started by having bloggers actually on the air and I thought that was good (being one of them). Last week, they switched format, it seems, to have producer and nice guy Tony Maciulis do the reports: He's good at it. Everybody's reading text off a screen and, yes, it does make for a straight line. animal sex clip
So what's the point? Well, sure, TV wants to get the geek-cool ruboff of this blog thing. But I think it's good that they're also promoting these new voices: The more the better. Have they found the right way to do it? Not yet. animal sex clip
MSNBC has talked about having a blog reporter and then having bloggers on to have actual opinions. I think may end up being a good way to go. animal sex clip
This week, MSNBC's Connected had me on not do the blog report -- I'll miss that question: 'What's happening in the blogosphere, BlogDaddy?' -- but instead to have actual opinions about the news media and the internet. animal sex clip
I think we'll end up with a hybrid: Blog reports do give a fresh breeze of vox pop on the air. Bloggers as guests get to bring new perspectives and voices to TV (and radio and print). And what I still want to see is citizens creating their own reports and commentary -- vlogs, podcasts, whatever -- and getting those on the air. animal sex clip
: Ed Cone comments here... without the cam. animal sex clip
How to speak
: Kit Seelye reports Harvard's Nieman Center is teaching the Chinese government how to deal with the press and this caused burps among Neiman alums appalled at the notion of working for a repressive regime. If they're teaching the Chinese how to spin, that's bad. If they're teaching them that transparency must come even to China, that's good. animal sex clip
Free speech is free speech
: The Center for Creative Voices and I are allies in the fight against censorship and government regulation of speech but we part over government regulation of the business of media. Creative Voices just released its media bill of rights. We agree at the start: A free and vibrant media, full of diverse and competing voices, is the lifeblood of America’s democracy and culture, as well as an engine of growth for its economy. They believe that corporate consolidation is ruining that. I believe that the internet is solving that and corporate consolidation is about the dinosaurs huddling together for warmth as their ice age approaches. I believe the market and technology are giving us incredible control and diversity. animal sex clip
At Freedom to Connect, Susan Crawford told us that we should not ask for regulation where we want it or we will get it where we don't want it: Witness the PBS kerfluffle. animal sex clip
Creative Voices wants regulation on ownership of media -- of the press, regulation on diversity of hiring in media; regulation mandating content on the airwaves: Electoral and civic, children’s, educational, independently produced, local and community programming, as well as programming that serves Americans with disabilities and underserved communities.
Media that reflect the presence and voices of people of color, women, labor, immigrants, Americans with disabilities, and other communities often underrepresented. But if you ask for that kind of regulation to give you the programming you think the world should have, you open the door to regulation to give the other side the programming they think the world should have. You want shows about people of color and women and immigrants. They want shows with God and no sex. animal sex clip
The only answer is the First Amendment as it applies to speech, content, regulation, and ownership: Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press... (And, yes, I now believe this holds for political speech as well.) animal sex clip
: CORRECTION: Jon Rintels, head of Creative Voices, corrects me in the comments: Creative Voices signed the bill of rights with others and did not release it on its own. He urges you to read the bill. So do I. We disagree about some things and agree about others so have at it. animal sex clip
Is Google the next AOL?
: Fred Wilson doesn't quite say that -- or even ask that -- in his good post contemplating the state of Google. So I'll ask it: Could Google pull an AOL?animal sex clip
Perhaps not. They don't charge. They don't have horrible customer service people putting you on hold. They didn't ruin my f-you money Time Warner stock (sorry, that's my problem, not yours). But it's raining on the honeymoon.animal sex clip
It is the peril of size: You grow too big. You separate yourself from your public. Happened to Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, journalism, GM, Walmart.... How big is too big? If you have to ask, it's probably too late. animal sex clip
Mind you, all those companies are huge and successful (mostly). But they're not beloved anymore. animal sex clip
But nevermind that emotional view of things. Who needs to be loved when you're rich?animal sex clip
The better analysis is to ask where Google is vulnerable, where newcomers can play the mouse to Google's elephant (or, as Fred says, Joe to Starbucks). I think there are opportunities to create better specialized searches (jobs, blogs, multimedia, local, cars, homes....), better ad networks (with more and better data and higher value for marketers and publishers), and so on.animal sex clip
I've asked it before and I'll ask it again: I love Google and what it has done organizing the world's information and valuing links and taking the cooties off of citizens' media and changing the culture. But is it time to start fearing Google (with its caching and its opaque ad policy and its opaque news policy) or mock Google (as Fred does, for reverting to banner ads)? Just asking. animal sex clip
The better question may be: Is it time to start competing with Google? Just wondering. animal sex clip
Go read Fred's post and contemplate the future of Google ... and the world --aren't they the same already? (Just joking.)animal sex clip
: UPDATE: John Battelle, who wrote the (upcoming) book on Google, adds: It's hard to be the de factor leader in the tech/media space, and Google is clearly not entirely prepped for the role, at least not yet. But given its success and its stock price, it has no choice. We're expecting the company to act how we want it to act. The problem, of course, is that we all have different expectations, and we all think we're right about what the company should do next.animal sex clip
The only thing a company can do in such a spot, it seems to me, is lead. Lead on issues of policy, transparency, open APIs, IP/DRM, and the like. How to do that? Have a clear and consistent voice and vision about where you think the web is going, and what kind of web you want to see built. That requires a confidence and certainty, characteristics which I sense exist in spades at the company, but have not really come out in a full throated way. There seems to be a lot of reacting going on at this moment - reactions to critics, to competitors, to PR flare ups.animal sex clip
It's scary to lead, to declare where you are going and then head there. It's even scarier to admit that as a leader you've made a mistake. But that's what we expect of our leaders - that they head somewhere, so we can either follow, or plot our next move to outsmart them and take their place. For now, it seems Google is a reluctant leader - it does not want to declare where it's going, or what it's plans are when it gets there. That's causing consternation and second guessing like Fred and Jeff and Dan's posts. : Roger L. Simon joins in and finds a good excuse to plug Pamama Media as an ad alternative. animal sex clip
Exploding TV: one-man bands
: Lost Remote reports that KRON-TV in San Francisco is the first major market news operation to switch to one-person TV crews (following some local cable news operations). The Remoters then wonder about what the audience will think of less-than-perfect video. A few observations:animal sex clip
: As audiences shrink, the way to maintain profitability -- for now -- will be to cut costs. Expect to see a lot more of this. animal sex clip
: I believe the audience cares more about a good story than a rock-steady camera. I've told the story already how I tried to convince a FoxNews exec that webcams would come to cable news and he got all huffy about backhaul quality and all that... and then I started broadcasting via webcam on MSNBC and they love it. It's real, they said, it's immediate. Rougher video will turn from being an economic move to a news fad. animal sex clip
: At one of the Harvard confabs, podcasters said that NPR gets obsessive about audio quality and that's a way to keep the people off the airwaves. The same is true of TV -- and, for that matter, print journalism: It's overcomplicated to keep the club closed and exclusive. But we all know how easy it is to write and publish if you have something to say. It's getting just as easy to broadcast and distribute. animal sex clip
: I'll be we'll quickly see local TV news -- and radio and newspapers -- follow the leads of Current.TV, blogcasts on MSNBC, YOURadio, and the podcast show on Sirius: You'll see just folks recording and reporting in any medium. animal sex clip
You tell 'em, Bernie
: Bernie Sanders -- the independent congressman who fought the good fight for free speech on Maher's show the other night -- writes more on the cause: Since his inauguration address, President Bush and his right-wing colleagues in Congress have launched a full-scale effort to limit and control the programming Americans are able to see and hear over the airwaves and the Internet. In short, they’re going after your computer, your radio and your remote control. I wish it were only the right-wing. But it's not. [ via SpeakSpeak] animal sex clip
: SpeakSpeak also sends us to a CafePress store with clever T-shirts -- "Shut the FCC up!" -- to support Creative Voices.animal sex clip
Stung
: A few weeks ago, I slapped down a journalism student who tried to sting Gawker with a false report. I said this violated the prime directive of journalism: Tell the truth. Don't lie. animal sex clip
Now that the Spokane Spokesman-Review has stung the town's mayor with someone acting like a studlette online to entrap the politiican. And Editor & Publisher asked a lot of newspapaper editors whether they approve of such deception. They don't. animal sex clip
In this age of transparency, acting like someone you're not and lying is not the way to get the news. animal sex clip
Imagine if every blogger out there tried to run a sting operation on anyone else and published it on the internet. It's wrong and it's dangerous. animal sex clip
Is it ever OK to be less than transparent at every stage? Sure. A restaurant critic doesn't reveal her identity when making a reservation. A consumer reporter can report an experience as a consumer without wearing a press badge. I don't tell everyone that I'm going to blog what I blog. animal sex clip
In a legendary investigation by the Sun-Times in Chicago, reporters opened a bar called the Mirage and waited for city officials to demand bribes, which they did, of course. What's the difference between that and what the Spokane sting? Well, the Mirage really was a bar, with real booze and real drunks. Is it different from what Spokane did? I'm still not sure. If they'd merely recorded everything that happened at someone else's bar, would that have been different?animal sex clip
The lines get a bit fuzzy. But I do believe that entrapment, deception, and lying are not the best ways to get the news. animal sex clip
: UPDATE: Len Witt, subbing on PressThink, has an IM interview with Spokesman-Review Editor Steve Smith: Witt: Okay. So let’s put the journalists and ethicists aside for a moment. Do you think a story like this, and the way you did it, builds or hurts the public’s trust in the media?animal sex clip
Smith: Based on what we're hearing from readers, it has built trust in our readers and Spokane citizens. They know what we wrote is true. Feedback is running 10- maybe 15-1 in our favor and those who don't like what we did rarely reference the computer expert.animal sex clip
I think our credibility with journalists is hurt. But I think this may be a sign of how disconnected some editors are from the sensibilities of citizens who want their newspapers to watchdog government and do it aggressively.animal sex clip
Let me add quickly. I think the knee jerk reaction of journalists is "we don't lie." I agree. But all of our ethics codes, SPJ for example, and even the Poynter's ethics specialists, allow for exceptions when there is no other way to get the info and the story is important enough. The feds are going after our mayor on official corruption charges as a result of our work. animal sex clip
May 10, 2005
Who's the teacher?
: Amy Gahran lists what journalists can learn from bloggers and bloggers from journalists and both together. A very good list. animal sex clip
You're fired up
: The Guardian finds the solution to circulation woes: It hires a fired Apprentice wannabe to sell the paper. animal sex clip
Democracy spreads
: Cha'nad Bahraini reports on democracy demonstrations in Bahrain. I went to GoogleNews to see whether I could find reports of it from big sources. I didn't find any. But I did find plans to open a Disleyland-style theme park there. Take a look at the blog; lots of great pictures (which take a while to load). [via the amazing Global Voice]animal sex clip
Ich bin ein Georgian
: Publius Pundit covers Bush's speech in Georgia: “You gathered here armed with nothing but roses and the power of your convictions and you claimed your liberty and because you acted, Georgia is today both sovereignty and free and a beacon of liberty for this region and the world.” animal sex clip
The fame parade
: Arianna certainly knows the famous and they keep coming. Today has posts from former blogger Bill Maher, former blogger Gary Hart, Larry David (supporting Bolton), Tina Brown (nicely done on her fade out from TV), Rob Reiner, Jerry Brown, Joe Scarborough, Larry Gelbart, Rob Reiner, Hiam Saban, Jon Corzine, Walter Cronkite.... Now if she can just get Letterman to blog....animal sex clip
: And in a smart business movie, Arianna is syndicating the fame blog via Tribune. animal sex clip
The man-blows-up-man story
: John Tierney has a super column in The Times today with long-needed journalistic self-examination of our coverage of "suicide bombers," as we've dubbed these insane murders. Tierney says he doesn't read these stories anymore, except the ones he had to report and write: When the other reporters and I finished filling our notebooks, we wondered morosely if we could have done a service to everyone - victims, mourners, readers - by reducing the story to a box score. We all knew the template: number of victims, size of the crater, distance debris had been hurled, height of smoke plume, range at which explosion was heard.animal sex clip
There was no larger lesson except that some insurgents were willing and able to kill civilians, which was not news. We were dutifully presenting as accurate an image as we could of one atrocity, but we knew we were contributing to a distorted picture of life for Iraqis....animal sex clip
Correspondents complained that they'd essentially become cop reporters, and that the suicide bombings took so much of their time that they couldn't report on the rest of the country. They were more interested in other stories, but as long as the rest of the press corps kept covering the bombing du jour, that was where their editors and producers expected them to be, too....animal sex clip
I'm not advocating official censorship, but there's no reason the news media can't reconsider their own fondness for covering suicide bombings. A little restraint would give the public a more realistic view of the world's dangers...animal sex clip
Terrorists know the numbers are against them and realize that daily bombings will not win the war. All along, their hope has been to inspire recruits and spread general fear with another tactic, the bombing as photo opportunity. For some reason, their media strategy still works.
animal sex clip
More power
: I've been holding off upgrading to the Treo 650 to see whether I can get a high-speed EVDO version from Verizon, which has said nothing. But now Earthlink, which resells Verizon access, says its 650 will use EVDO, according to Treonauts. Blogging from anywhere, baby. animal sex clip
And a good thing it is
: Andrew Sullivan confesses.animal sex clip
Big Mac tax
: Detroit is talking about taxing fast food. animal sex clip
What a nitwit idea. animal sex clip
First, what's fast? My Chinese restaurant is really fast but it doesn't sell burgers. animal sex clip
Second, poor people eat fast food. Let's tax them more. Poor people serve fast food. Let's eliminate a few of their jobs. animal sex clip
Third, this is a rather obnoxious means of trying to legislate lifestyle. I'm OK with taxing tobacco because the cost to society of its effects is substantial. Booze? Well, what the hell, that precedent is set. Gasoline? Yes, we need to find some way to reduce demand (though this isn't the way... but that's another argument). animal sex clip
But taxing my Taco Bell chicken grilled stufft burrito? Butt out, bozo. animal sex clip
This is taxation as punishment for something somebody doesn't approve of: Tax the smokers, the drinkers, the gas-guzzlers, the rich, the burger-snarfers. animal sex clip
What's next? Taxing violent games? Sexy movies? Condoms? animal sex clip
If we're really going to improve the quality of life via fiscal policy, I say let's tax checkered flannel shirts, polyester suits, car alarms that make 20 obnoxious sounds and never turn off, Dr. Phil, mullets, Britney Spears CDs, bare-midriff tops over size 6, Speedos in any size, magnetic ribbons on the backs of cars in any color, Starbucks orders of more than four words, pop-up ads, tofu, PowerPoint, and gum. animal sex clip
What else? animal sex clip
Video help
: Trey Jackson is the videographer of blogs. He records and makes available all kinds of blogworthy bits from TV -- because the networks don't do it (and they should). Not surprisingly, his bandwidth bill is a killer. He needs help. animal sex clip
And the don't even have a First Amendment
: British TV authorities -- and where there are TV authorities in any country is beyond me -- have decided that the airing of the Jerry Springer opera did not violate their rules ... despite its Deadwoodspeak. Jerry Springer: the Opera provoked accusations of blasphemy and a firestorm of protest from religious campaigners when it was broadcast earlier this year. But the television watchdog Ofcom has ruled that the programme did not breach broadcasting guidelines.animal sex clip
Ofcom received more than 16,000 complaints - an unprecedented number - but yesterday ruled that although the January showing "clearly had the potential to offend and indeed the intention to shock, it was set in a very clear context as a comment on modern TV"....animal sex clip
Religious groups were particularly offended by the programme's portrayal of Christian figures, which included Jesus wearing a nappy.animal sex clip
Tabloid press reports stoked the controversy, saying that the programme contained 8,000 swear words. According to the BBC, however, it only contained "around 200 f-words" and "nine c-words".animal sex clip
In its ruling, Ofcom said it "appreciated that the representation of religious figures was offensive to some people".animal sex clip
But it said: "The show's effect was to satirise modern fame and the culture of celebrity....." animal sex clip
Everything bad is....
: I was wandering down M Street in Georgetown after doing MSNBC and having dinner last night and so I went into the Barnes & Noble there and while looking at magazines, I heard some author upstairs talking; thought nothing of it until I heard the words "social software." How many people use the words "social software" in a sentence? The odds are good that I knew whoever it was, I figured. And sure enough: It was Steven Johnson beginning his book tour for Everything Bad is Good for You. I caught the last hunk of his performance and he was engaging and provocative and a few of the folks in the audienc -- book readers, obviously -- bristled a bit at the notion that TV and games can be good for us and make us smarter, as Steven argues. He did a good job defending his thesis and pop culture with it. animal sex clip
And by the way, I'm coming to wonder whether books are any better for us than TV or movies or the internet or any other form of media. It's not for medium that makes it intelligent but the thought inside. But that will be the subject of another post....animal sex clip
May 09, 2005
Blog biz
: The NY Times announced changes to its business sections, including: On Mondays, Business Day will focus on media and marketing news, with technology included as it relates to those industries. David Carr will write a column on new media; the world of blogs will be covered as a regular feature. animal sex clip
The value of free
: The LA Times has rescinded its irritating and obviously unsuccessful decision to charge for its online Calendar. animal sex clip
On MSNBC's Connected
: I'll be on MSNBC's Connected shortly after 5p to talk about blaming the media messenger (or not) -- or, I'd say, improving the media's message -- with Craig Crawford and Bill McGowan. animal sex clip
A Palestinian blogger
: Just starting. [Thanks, Paul Edwards]animal sex clip
Arianna launches
: Arianna Huffington's blog -- half Drudge/Sploid, half celebrity bon mot catcher -- is live. Star bloggers on the home page include Mike Nichols, Ellen DeGeneres (on horseback), John Cusack, Harry Shearer (who'll eat the press), Michael Isikoff, David Frum, Julia Louis-Dreyfus & Brad Hall (together), and David Mamet (being most Mametty); more bloggers of lesser names appear on the blog within the blog (which has a lengthy blogroll upon which I'm pleased to appear). animal sex clip
A definition of blogs
: I've been thinking about Adam Cohen's fretting over blog ethics and how he and many others try to see blogs in their context as an institution, as media, as journalism. I said below that journalism is institutional and blogs are personal, journalism has become dispassionate and blogs are passionate. I've tried to refine that into a simpler, clearer definition of blogs. Try this one for size: Blogs are the voices of citizens in conversation. animal sex clip
How to improve credibility: The Times report
: Today The Times is issuing a report from a committee charged by Executive Editor Bill Keller with finding ways to improve the credibility of the paper -- and the industry, really. The report and Keller's response will be online here later today but from the story about it in today's paper by Kit Seelye, the recommendations look to be spot on. animal sex clip
What I like most about it is that the committee recommends moves that will bring the paper and its readers into more of a conversation. I said yesterday that journalists blathering on at ethereal heights about journalistic ethics can be too self-centered. But journalists talking with citizens about the news and how it is covered in present tense can be useful and compelling. It's not just about defending the paper -- though I agree that's proper and necessary. And it's not just about journalistic standards. It's about bringing out different perspectives and more information about the news we cover and care about. animal sex clip
The summary that appears on the paper (but not online) lists these steps: 1. Encourage the executive editor and two managing editors to share responsibility for writing a regular column that deals with matters concerning the paper. I'd be eager to see them deal with matters concerning news and its coverage as well. 2. Make reporters and editors more easily available through email. That's not a bad idea at all. But I would say that those reporters and editors cannot be expected to answer all that email (hell, I don't and all I have is a blog). I was going to suggest that they could reply to the ideas and issues raised in email in a public forum such as a blog... but hold on a minute... 3. Use the Web to provide readers with complete documents used in stories as well as transcripts of interviews. Exactly right. It's not that people want more but when they do, we make our process transparent. And I believe that will only bolster the quality of that work. If some disagree with a reporter's decisions, then they now get the tools to decide for themselves. 4. Consider creating a Times blog that promotes interaction with readers. Stop the unpresses! A Times blog! Can't wait! (See Keller's earlier musings on the notion here.) 5. Further curtail the use of anonymous sources. Dan Okrent wrote about this at length and well yesterday. 6. Encourage reporters to confirm the accuracy of articles with sources before publication and to solicit feedback from sources after publication. I'll admit that as a reporter, that wasn't always easy but it is good. The favorite class session I included in the new-media curriclulum for CUNY's new Graduate School of Journalism is inviting the sources and subjects of the students' stories to come to class and get their perspective on what had been written. 7. Set up an error-tracking system to detect patterns and trends. Good idea. I wonder whether that could be a distributed system... I wonder whether it could be used to track errors (or allegations of errors) in blogs and wikis and other news sources. 8. Encourage the development of software to detect plagiarism when accusations arise. 9. Increase coverage of middle America, rural areas and religion. I know that one will be a straightline to wags aplenty. But it's a good suggestion. When I started EW, I put a piece of paper in a frame in my office reminding me and the staff how many Americans do not live in New York. The New York Times is the national newspaper and so covering the nation better is without doubt a good goal. 10. Establish a system for evaluating public attacks on The Times' work and determining whether and how to respond. In some ways, this is the most surprising and best suggestion of the committee. And it's not because The Times is a victim and needs to defend itself, though I'm sure reporters often feel that way (and I'll say I felt bad going after the reporter who wrote this very story). But what's important here is that when the paper or other news institutions (read: Dan Rather) do not respond to such attacks, they seem to be above, apart, and separate from the public they serve. By responding, they enter into a conversation. And when The Times responds, I have confidence they'll do so with civility and facts and that will not only mean joining the converation but also raising the level of it. And that's good. When attacked, the response won't always be, 'oops, we were wrong,' or even 'you were wrong and here are the facts that back us up' but also 'thanks, we'll look into that.' animal sex clip
I'm going to be offline when the report goes online today but I'll read it with eager interest. I'll also be eager to read your comments and posts. animal sex clip
: LATER: Matt Duffy comments. animal sex clip
: UPDATE: The full report is up now.animal sex clip
: UPDATE: Here is Bill Keller's announcement of the report, with well-justified praise for the committee's head, Al Siegel. animal sex clip
May 08, 2005
Watching Google
: Local media companies should make no mistake that Google will become a major competitor. The latest: Dan Gillmor finds that Google has been collecting movie reviews and local movie listings for a bit now. animal sex clip
: Matt in the comments points out it was in the Google blog in February. I, too, missed it. Doesn't matter when. The suite of local stuff is getting ever more impressive or scary, depending upon your perspective.animal sex clip
Tale wags
: Chris Anderson reacts to the post below, agreeing that it's mistaken to try to turn blogs into an institution: You can find responsible and irresponsible blogs, journalistic and non-journalistic ones, male-dominated clusters and female-dominated clusters, snarky blogs and serious blogs, and superficial, derivative, navel-gazing ones alongside ones of such depth and scholarship that they put even the serious press to shame.animal sex clip
In short, blogs are a Long Tail, and it is always a mistake to generalize about the quality or nature of content in the Long Tail--it is, by definition, variable and diverse.animal sex clip
The presumption that things that are less popular are less good is a classic fallacy; indeed,tail content is often of higher quality than head content, simply because it is uncompromising. Content that is perfectly targeted for some people will be, by definition, wrong for other people--and that's okay. animal sex clip
Navel boring
: On today's Times editorial page, Adam Cohen questions the ethics of bloggers. animal sex clip
What he's really doing is trying to fit round-peg individual bloggers into his square-hole institution of journalism. animal sex clip
For there's nothing journalists like better, it sometimes seems, than dissecting their professional ethics. Of course, it's right and necessary for them to examine themselves and their ethics, practices, standards, and credibility -- especially today, when all are being questioned. But what they can lose sight of the fact that it's quite simple, really: Do people trust you to tell the truth? animal sex clip
But they overcomplicate the discussion and that raises problems: animal sex clip
First, the discussion of journalistic ethics is so obsessively self-centered. I often hear newspaper editors talk about online interactivity only as a way to get readers to talk about newspapers and the issues they raise: 'Enough about you, how about us?' Instead, the internet should be opening up new ways for them to listen to the public they serve. animal sex clip
Second, the discussion gets so nitpicky it can easily miss the larger picture: all trees, no forest. Take the case of USA Today ousting respected correspondent Tom Squitieri over use of quotes. He didn't steal them. The quotes appeared in another paper's story; he called the sources and asked them for quotes and they said the quotes that had appeared already were best, so he used them. His mortal sin was not mentioning that the quotes had appeared in another paper as well. Absurd. So the paper set itself another rule and precedent and lost a respected journalist who, in fact, had held the paper's feet to the fire over ethical issues involving another reporter. This is about ethical appearances more than credible reality. animal sex clip
Third, journalists and their conventioneering organizations like to make many lists of rules about ethics, which make some lose sight of the more fundamental notion that ethics are really a matter of individual conscience and trust: You can follow every rule in the book but still slant a story or a paper's coverage by the news you select and how you write it; you can still squander your trust. animal sex clip
Fourth, in all of this, journalists come to believe that what's good for journalism is good for America, that what applies to them applies to everyone. animal sex clip
So now I take you Cohen's column: But more bloggers, and blog readers, are starting to ask whether at least the most prominent blogs with the highest traffic shouldn't hold themselves to the same high standards to which they hold other media. Which assumes that they don't. Who says they don't? Who are these bloggers and what are their alleged lapses? And why do you think the behavior of any one blogger reflects on the ethics of all bloggers? Why do you think that all bloggers have to act the same? animal sex clip
In this, Cohen is saying a lot:animal sex clip
He is, again, trying to turn blogs into an institution, like journalism. But they are not. Blogs are all individual. At the end of my email exchange with Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, that became, I think, the distillation of our difference in worldviews: Journalism is institutional, blogs are personal. Journalism has become dispassionate, blogs are passionate. Bloggers are just people, citizens, readers. But Cohen is viewing them through the journalist's green eyeshade and he expects these people he sees -- the same ones who've always been out there complaining, only now they have the means to speak and he is forced to listen -- to operate as he is supposed to operate. animal sex clip
Next, he's saying that readers need a code of ethics before they can hold journalists accountable for theirs. But readers are bringing their own individual sense of ethics and credibility to the discussion. Listen to what some of them are saying, Mr. Cohen: 'We are (or were) your readers and we don't trust you.' That's what young people told the Carnegie Foundation. Clearly, they have their own ethical standards and they are saying that journalists don't meet them. animal sex clip
Then he's implying that without a code of ethics you don't have ethics. That, of course, is wrong and grossly insulting to these people, these citizens, these readers. Every one of those readers has a sense of ethics, whether or not it is codified as a group. Every blogger has an ethic, but you may disagree with it.animal sex clip
Do bloggers need a corporate code of ethics? I don't think so, because, once more, bloggers are not an institution. Wonkette is not Buzzmachine is not Fark is not Drudge is not Instapundit is not Kos is not Powerline is not.....animal sex clip
But that's not to say that bloggers cannot lapse as journalists do. The difference as I see it is that bloggers are quicker to admit it or get caught. I remember one blogger -- whose name I now forget -- who was caught copying posts without credit. He was called out and dismissed by the blogosphere in short order and his traffic died. If I make a mistake, I often say, readers descend upon me like white blood cells on a germ to make me correct it. If a blogger is found to be on the take to a campaign (well, a few have), that sets off a discussion of ethnics and standards as robust as any J-school seminar. animal sex clip
For bloggers, just like journalists and their institutions, our key asset is trust. Break that trust and you may never repair it. That, again, is the essence of journalistic and blogging ethics. animal sex clip
I do believe that some education can be in order. The useful thing for Cohen or me, as journalists, to do might be to share what we've learned about professional ethics and let bloggers decide whether they accept those standards. Cohen makes a start: Information should be verified before it is printed, and people who are involved in a story should be given a chance to air their viewpoints, especially if they are under attack. Reporters should avoid conflicts of interest, even significant appearances of conflicts, and disclose any significant ones. Often, a conflict means being disqualified to cover a story or a subject. When errors are discovered or pointed out by internal or external sources, they must be corrected. And there should be a clear wall between editorial content and advertising. I'd say that most bloggers I read and trust follow such rules. Or I trust them to. animal sex clip
This is also why, when I first wrote a new-media curriculum for the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism, I included the notion that the courses should be webcast so learning could travel two ways: If they wished, citizen journalists could learn the standards presented in class and could also challenge those standards and teach the class their own view. Out of that, better standards will evolve. animal sex clip
Cohen goes on to -- with no sense of irony -- accuse bloggers of not reporting on their accusations even as he does not report on his accusations. My notes in brackets: Many bloggers make little effort to check their information [name two, please], and think nothing of posting a personal attack without calling the target first - or calling the target at all. [And how many bloggers did you call before you made this blanket attack? How many did you allow to respond in your column? Does your paper call everyone who is criticized on its editorial and op-ed pages? I doubt it.] They rarely have procedures for running a correction. [Who says? Glenn Reynolds, for one, has set forth a very clear statement that many follow.] The wall between their editorial content and advertising is often nonexistent. (Wonkette, a witty and well-read Washington blog, posts a weekly shout-out inside its editorial text to its advertisers, including partisan ones like Democrats.org.) [See the business section of your very own paper for an explanation of that, which you are free to chose not to accept, but it is a policy.] And bloggers rarely disclose whether they are receiving money from the people or causes they write about. [Rarely? How do you know? Again, name two.] He hints that bloggers don't reveal when they are on campaign staffs when, in fact, at every opportunity, such bloggers are outed by other bloggers and there have been very heated exchanges about this issue in the blogosphere (which I choose not to reignite right now). animal sex clip
Cohen concludes: Many bloggers who criticize the MSM's ethics, however, are in the anomalous position of holding themselves to lower standards, or no standards at all. Or higher standards: not the borrowed standards of an industry committee, but their own standards, their own conscience. That, in the end, is the only standard that matters. animal sex clip
: ALSO: At the same time, I'm not saying that journalistic institutions should not have codes of ethics. Of course, they should. And in today's column by Times public editor Dan Okrent, you see the wrangling over such a code continue as the paper and the industry grapples with the opaque habit of newsmakers and news reporters to rely on unnamed sources. animal sex clip
: AND: You want to see the ethic of blogs? animal sex clip
Try this post out of the Nashville confab: Transparency, accountability, creativity, passion , personality, disagreement (without being disagreeable), listen, link, forgive, and more. animal sex clip
And here's my list of the ethics of blogging prior to a Harvard confab: : The ethic of transparency: We believe that our public deserves to know about us and our perspective to better judge what we say. animal sex clip
: The ethic of conversation: We do not believe in one-sided lectures. We believe conversation leads to better understanding.animal sex clip
: The ethic of humanity: We believe this medium lives at a human level while old media lives at an institutional level. animal sex clip
: The ethic of the link: We believe one of our key jobs is to link our public to other voices and to source material so they may judge themselves. animal sex clip
: The ethic of correction: We believe it is vital to correct errors quickly and openly. animal sex clip
: The ethic of immediacy: We believe that the fast spread of information is will yield better information. : Ann Althouse adds: Please. The journalistic code didn't keep Jordan and Rather in line. It was the bloggers, invoking their own standards -- not a code but an evolving culture -- that called them to account. Any bloggers with any kind of high profile will be similarly called to account if they violate the blogosphere's cultural norms. And Jordan and Rather can take up blogging any minute they want. Our practice is open to anyone who wants to join. : More from Citizen Z and Tim Worstall and Mudville and Instapundit and LGF and Pejman and Patterico, who tries to send a letter to Cohen. animal sex clip
: Now James Wolcott piles on. animal sex clip
Rosen speaks
: Jay Rosen is off to Australia for a big-deal speech; he has posted the first part here. And in his absence, Len Witt will be pressthinking for him.animal sex clip
May 07, 2005
Maher report
: I like it when Andrew Sullivan appears on Bill Maher's show, for the two of them play a great game of TV tennis. animal sex clip
Maher has been finding evidence -- credible evidence, I say -- that the religious look crazy ("magic underwear?"), while Sullivan has been giving a good defense to the moderately religious (I'm on his side). This week, when the topic came up, Sullivan said, and Lord knows I agree with this, that it's time for the moderate to take back religion from the fringe. But Maher said, come on, Andrew, these people are the ones who would get you on your knees and may you pray until you like pussy. That silenced Andrew for a few beats and then he recovered: "It'd take a lot more than Pat Robertson to get me to like pussy." animal sex clip
Later, they talked about the pope and Sullivan said that the molestation scandal reaches right up to Benedict XVI, who covered up the scandal. Maher said, "And this is my point to you about religion. Religion empowers men with infallibility." Sullivan said the church is imperfect but it "is the only thing we've got." Maher says, no, it isn't, "why not have just your spirituality." Sullivan says that without the institutions, the faith would not have been kept alive. animal sex clip
It ain't Sunday morning TV and that's why I like it. animal sex clip
: Maher also had on Bernie Sanders, now the independent candidate for Senate in Vermont, who went on a fine rant against the indecent indecency bill in Congress. Go give Bernie some traffic. animal sex clip
: In his new rules, Maher said that Jenifer Wilbanks isn't insane for running away. She'd be insane if she'd agree to spend the rest of her life servicing -- cue picture of her fiance -- "this goober."animal sex clip
He offers her a bus ticket to L.A. "You're crazy and you don't care about anyone's feelings but you're own. You belong in Hollywood... You're a reality show waiting to happen..."animal sex clip
Gawking
: The NY Times Sunday biz section has a wet kiss for my friend Nick Denton and Gawker Media. animal sex clip
Blogging before journalism
: Business Week's Stephen Baker has a great moment in journalism and blogging today: He asks the audience for questions before he interviews Arianna Huffington on her new blog venture. That's the way to do it: involving the public in your journalism, asking them what they want asked. animal sex clip
My suggestions, posted there (eventually): Thanks for asking!...animal sex clip
* I'd ask whether she will include only the famous or whether she'll make some people famous. animal sex clip
* Did I read correctly that she has a relationship with Tribune? (Couldn't believe my eyes and perhaps I shouldn't.)animal sex clip
* Is she going to pay her contributors? Or is having rich people who don't need the money the smartest business model going?animal sex clip
* Will she share the wealth with other bloggers in other ways: Will she have a blogroll to link out and give traffic love to the bloggers she loves?animal sex clip
* Will she insist that the contributors link (as any blogger must) or will they merely -- as I blogged the announcement -- throw bon mots that she catches? animal sex clip
* Will her bloggers end up in conversations (as they must to be bloggers)?animal sex clip
* What's the essence of her blog -- the bon mots of the famous? the Huffington party line? the first-person People? : It's also cool that they're putting up Flickr photos with credits. And while I'm in praise mode, I'll link to Henry Copeland's praise of Baker. animal sex clip
World development
: To my own surprise, on Tuesday I'm speaking to a World Bank session for web developers from lots of organizations, including the UN and others. I'll be talking from the viewpoint of a spectator to this wonderful world of citizens' media and will recommend that if they want to talk to people who really know how to do this they should see Hossein Derakhshan, Rebecca McKinnon, Ethan Zuckerman, Joi Ito, et al. The session is supposed to be webcast but I think that may be only for members of their Web for Development community. animal sex clip
TV Watch coverage
: On the Media covers the launch of TV Watch. Listen here. (My posts here and here.)animal sex clip
: Here's TV critic Melanie McFarland's column about TV Watch and about the PBS konservative kerfluffle. animal sex clip
: Here's a UPI story in the Washington Times that can't find the heart to go after TV Watch, considering how damned bipartisan it is. animal sex clip
: Here's fellow TV Watch traveler SpeakSpeak on how damned bipartisan it is. animal sex clip
: Frankly, I think the coverage fizzled. animal sex clip
Open Media 100
: Dave Sifry and Always On are asking for your nominations for the Open Media 100. animal sex clip
Craig's community
: Craig Newmark talks to the AP about supporting journalism. Craig will be in town for the Personal Democracy Forum and I look forward to braininstorming then. animal sex clip
(By the way, anyone who'd like to attend PDF can get a $70 discount with this code: buzz225.)animal sex clip
: LATER: Craig blogs on the need for newsrooms as an appendix to the AP story: With all the excitement about citizens' media, it's easy to forget how important current news operations are. We have a lot of journalists there, but also, fact checkers, editors, and so on, and they perform an indispensable function.animal sex clip
I feel that citizens' media complements that, and that professional and citizen journalists will blur together in networks of collaboration. : And he adds more here. animal sex clip
Open Source radio
: Chris Lydon's new Open Source radio show is coming on the air May 30: "A lively, hour-long, on-air conversation designed to capture "the sound of the Web" with the popular Christopher Lydon engaging callers, e-mailers, and bloggers from around the world." Bravo. I'm hoping I get to hear it on podcast and Sirius. [via Dave]animal sex clip
Runaway (Bride) story, still running
: Dave Winer says that Aaron Brown was the last real news on (I can hear arguments on both side of that view) but when the show devoted itself to the runaway bride, that was the last straw for Dave. CNN goes on his pay-no-nevermind list. animal sex clip
It so happens that On the Media interviewed CNN head Jonathan Klein on this week's show and hammered him on the runaway bride, asking whether having the bride run away with every show was an example of his vow to get in depth with more stories. I would have thought he'd have chuckled and said, hey, sometimes ya gotta do what your competition's doing. But, no, he said that, indeed, the runaway bride was an example of his vow for in-depth coverage. They covered the bride in depth. He then bragged about going heavy on the Schiavo story and making it part of the national agenda. Gee, thanks. (Listen to the segment here; download the show here.)animal sex clip
Here's my earlier post on the runaway story. animal sex clip
And while we're on the topic of tacky cultural trends (that is the topic, isn't it?), go to eBay and find active bidding for Jennifer Wilbanks wedding invitations and many copycat efforts at inane humor with Wilbanks toast. animal sex clip
Fark says: "Runaway bride offers apology. CNN yet to apologize for deeming this newsworthy"animal sex clip
One Farker says: "I hate celebrities. I hate makeshift celebrities even more."animal sex clip
May 06, 2005
Tree fell. Anybody hear it?
: Tina Brown's show is canceled. As Gomer (or was it Guber?) used to say: Surprise, surprise, surprise. animal sex clip
Broadcast flag at half-staff
: An appellate court turns down the broadcast flag: ...the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the Federal Communications Commission had overstepped its authority in trying to regulate how consumers can use their TV sets after they receive broadcasts. Ernie Miller's on top of the story and quotes the decision: The FCC argues that the Commission has "discretion” to exercise “broad authority” over equipment used in connection with radio and wire transmissions, “when the need arises, even if it has not previously regulated in a particular area.” FCC Br. at 17. This is an extraordinary proposition. “The [Commission’s] position in this case amounts to the bare suggestion that it possesses plenary authority to act within a given area simply because Congress has endowed it with some authority to act in that area. We categorically reject that suggestion. Agencies owe their capacity to act to the delegation of authority” from Congress. See Ry. Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 29 F.3d at 670. The FCC, like other federal agencies, “literally has no power to act . . . unless and until Congress confers power upon it.” La. Pub. Serv. Comm’n v. FCC, 476 U.S. 355, 374 (1986). In this case, all relevant materials concerning the FCC’s jurisdiction – including the words of the Communications Act of 1934, its legislative history, subsequent legislation, relevant case law, and Commission practice – confirm that the FCC has no authority to regulate consumer electronic devices that can be used for receipt of wire or radio communication when those devices are not engaged in the process of radio or wire transmission. Earlier, FCC Commissioner Adelstein said they'd need to start from scratch on protecting broadcast content. animal sex clip
: No, no, no: The far smarter thing to do would be to turn around and ask how the entertainment industry can take advantage of this opportunity: You support free broadcast TV with advertising. You should find the way to support free distributed TV with advertising. That will be a lot easier -- and more lucrative -- than playing legal wack-a-mole.animal sex clip
: Wikipedia background here. CNET's story here. animal sex clip
: I was waiting to hear what Susan Crawford said about the case. She says it has bigger implications for regulation: Although the DC Circuit didn't have to reach this question, my view is that when the FCC starts making rules about a VoIP application that doesn't terminate calls using a traditional telephone number, or an email application, or PCs, or anything else it hasn't traditionally made rules about, it will be acting beyond the powers given it by Congress. This means we will have to have a sustained national conversation about the scope of the FCC's authority over the internet before the Commission can act.animal sex clip
From what I've been hearing, it's going to take several years for any rewrite of the Communications Act to happen. In the meantime, today's opinion signals that the FCC should act with self-restraint. : I would argue that the FCC has also overstepped its statutory authority in indecency, but that's another subject. animal sex clip
May 05, 2005
Pick your headline: Google steals content... Google declares war on publishers... Google violates copyright.... Google is evil.... None of the above... All of the above....
: Correct me if I'm wrong, but Google is repeating one of the great sins of AOL, promising to "accelerate" the web by caching -- that is, copying and storing -- web pages to serve to you. animal sex clip
It's one matter when the search engine caches a page you can't get anymore; that's a copyright violation but an all-in-all benign one in the sense that it's only giving you content you could not otherwise see (no different from, say, the web archive). animal sex clip
But it's quite another matter for Google to get in the way of serving current content. This means that the page is served from Google rather than from a publisher's server, which means that the publisher cannot count the traffic and serve targeted and dynamic advertising. animal sex clip
It also means that Google is copying content on its servers and serving it from there and thus is violating copyright. animal sex clip
And it means that Google is in a position to snoop on data on consumers' usage of sites that Google does not own: That is, Google will know what the consumers on my site are doing better than I will for these "accelerated" pages.animal sex clip
I'm also reading that Google shortstops cookies, which affects not only publishers but also users. Cory Doctorow points out: "...but of course you're not anonymous to Google, which knows about your search history (if you've got cookies on), your email address (if you register for Groups, etc), your friends (if you use Orkut), your email (if you use gmail), and even has your credit card (if you use AdWords or Answers)."animal sex clip
And all this is done in the name of accelerating the web in an era when most of us have broadband and it doesn't need much acceleration. animal sex clip
Again, if I'm getting that wrong, please tell me. But I'll just bet we'll see publishers telling their lawyers go to fetch. animal sex clip
Here's PaidContent's writeup; here's Steve Yelvington's writeup; here's John Battelle's. animal sex clip
Search Engine Journal reports that the accelerator is screwing up, serving the wrong pages to the wrong people and even signing people into forums under the wrong names. animal sex clip
Fantomas gives instructions on how to block the Google accelerator. animal sex clip
: See earlier cautionary notes on Google here and here. animal sex clip
Bottom line: I see no reason why I should be expected to trust these guys anymore. animal sex clip
Crystal ball
: Alex Beam, who sometimes chooses not to get the future, tries to write a cute column about the future, when Nick Denton buys The New York Times. Tries way, way too hard. Too cute by half. And essentially wrong-headed, arguing that only in newspapers are serious issues like Social Security discussed -- when, in fact, if you look up Social Security online you'll find, often, more discussion and better depth. animal sex clip
Imported
: I'm sorry, but I don't understand why the Guardian imported Kos to blog the British election -- and write lines like this: "Exit polls numbers have dominated the coverage of the election up until now, and it's no wonder. It satiates our desire to get some metric of progress, and it helps fill the dead airtime between the polls closing and actual results." [let's all use "satiate" in a sentence] -- when there are plenty of great Brit bloggers. No offense to Kos, but I'd rather hear another British voice. animal sex clip
Jumping the shark for Jesus, continued
: George Will has a good start to a column today about George Bush apparently trying to pull back from the follies of the religious fringe. But Will doesn't pull back quite far enough, in my view, for he contrasts only the religious fringe with the godless and leaves out the vast religious majority inbetween. The state of America's political discourse is such that the president has felt it necessary to declare that unbelievers can be good Americans. In last week's prime-time news conference, he said: "If you choose not to worship, you're equally as patriotic as somebody who does worship."animal sex clip
So Mark Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes and a long, luminous list of other skeptics can be spared the posthumous ignominy of being stricken from the rolls of exemplary Americans. And almost 30 million living Americans welcomed that presidential benediction.
According to the American Religious Identification Survey, Americans who answer "none" when asked to identify their religion numbered 29.4 million in 2001, more than double the 14.3 million in 1990. If unbelievers had their own state -- the state of None -- its population would be more than twice that of New England's six states, and None would be the nation's second-largest state:animal sex clip
California, 34.5 million.animal sex clip
None, 29.4 million.animal sex clip
Texas, 21.3 million.animal sex clip
The president, whose political instincts, at least, are no longer so misunderestimated by his despisers, may have hoped his remarks about unbelievers would undo some of the damage done by the Terri Schiavo case. During that Florida controversy, he made a late-night flight from his Texas ranch to Washington to dramatize his signing of imprudent legislation that his party was primarily responsible for passing. He and his party seemed to have subcontracted governance to certain especially fervid religious supporters. He then goes on to praise Pat Robertson -- "who is fervid but also shrewd" -- for tolerating the idea of a Guiliani run for President and says: "Some Christians should practice the magnanimity of the strong rather than cultivate the grievances of the weak." animal sex clip
As if Robertson is a model. He neglects to mention Robertson's other recent media appearance contending that loose judges are the most serious threat to America in 400 years of history -- more serious than the Nazis and slavery and explicitly more serious than al Qaeda. A fine model of political reasonableness.animal sex clip
Will then goes on to argue that the religious right should stop trying to play victim and he uses Passion of the Christ and best-selling religious books and more as his evidence. "But their persecution complex is unbecoming because it is unrealistic." I agree with that.animal sex clip
But I have a problem with making Robertson, Passion, and the Left Behind books the milestones of religion in America. Will puts people in that camp or in the unbelieving camp. But there is a vast religious middle that would not qualify as religious by the definition of some, that may not be the most loyal churchgoers or churchgoers at all, that may hold opinions that are antithetical to the beliefs of this group... but they are religious Americans nonetheless. I am in that middle, that mainstream. But that's the subject of another post another day.animal sex clip
: At the same time, in The Times, David Brooks writes about religion and Abraham Lincoln: On Sept. 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln gathered his cabinet to tell them he was going to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He said he had made a solemn vow to the Almighty that if God gave him victory at Antietam, Lincoln would issue the decree.animal sex clip
Lincoln's colleagues were stunned. They were not used to his basing policy on promises made to the Lord. They asked him to repeat what he'd just said. Lincoln conceded that "this might seem strange," but "God had decided the question in favor of the slaves."animal sex clip
I like to think about this episode when I hear militant secularists argue that faith should be kept out of politics. Well, I'd be stunned, too. So what if the battle had gone the other way: Would Lincoln have left the slaves imprisoned? Does this mean he believes that God joins in a battle? Yes, stunning. I don't think that's a mark of sane religion in government any more than Pat Robertson is. animal sex clip
Deciding that slavery is wrong and must be stopped should not require a signal from God; it should be evident from studying God's word and from examining one's own conscience. Brooks would call that relativism -- "the bland relativism of the militant secularists." But that is not relativism. That is morality. That is what religion is about. animal sex clip
But Brooks would call me a "militant secularist." I think those are fighting words. animal sex clip
Nannyism gone wild
: Jay Allen sends news that a middle-school marching band in Benton Harbor, Michigan, was forbidden from playing Louie Louie -- the instrumental version -- because one lone whining parent thinks it's obscene. There was, by the way, an FBI investigation into the song years ago that concluded it is not obscene and, in any case, the lyrics can't be understood. The Smoking Gun has pages from the file and the real lyrics. animal sex clip
Exploding media: local
: See Fred Wilson's post about Backfence and 101 and other efforts to bring media to its proper local level. animal sex clip
Exploding media: creativity
: For me, the lesson I learn from the announcements last week that podcasts are coming to Infinity Radio and Sirius is that big media is adopting citizens' media faster than I ever would have predicted. animal sex clip
I've said that what would make big media pay attention to citizens' media, in the end, would be economics: We, the people, are creating compelling, valuable, addictive, fresh content at a lower cost than the big boys with all their big ways and big costs. And as the big boys' audience and revenue shrink, they will turn to new ways to make content and save money. animal sex clip
I thought this would take time to happen -- as it has taken time for mainstream media to decide that they wouldn't get cooties reading blogs. But I was operating in the wrong world, on the wrong timetable. Mainstream media journalists have been slow to accept or at least acknowledge citizens' media because they operate in a priesthood, a club closed in by its standards and rules, and they don't want to change any of that and allow new members in. animal sex clip
But radio is entertainment. It is a business. There's no hooha about professionalism and higher standards. Hell, just look at prime time. Listen to radio.animal sex clip
So along comes content that is new and getting an audience and -- best of all -- cheap or even free, and you'll see guys in suits slap on iPods and webcams faster than you can spell EBITDA. animal sex clip
But this raises two issues, two cautions:animal sex clip
The first is podcasts and vlogs are new, really new. Their potential is limitless. But at a year old, even Mozart couldn't play chopsticks. They have not begun to reach their potential. So I worry that Infinity and Sirius will slap on lots of podcasts and we'll immediately read the reviews from big media snobs that it's all tedious crap. Or a lot of it may actually be tedious crap. And then it will all be dismissed as a fad, a bubble, a nothing. And I don't want to see that happen. And the fate of this media merger is in the hands of Adam Curry and whoever is programming YOURadio and Current.TV and I have hope that they will do more than just slap up any old multimedia blather. I know they will pick the best they can find. I also know that the people will make great stuff to try to impress them and get the attention. But the programming directors here -- inserting themselves into a new medium where programming directors are an oxymoron -- need to do more: They need to encourage and support the best. And that leads to the other issue...animal sex clip
The big guys can't just exploit the citizen-producers and take the stuff for free. They need to find value in what they create and pay that value not just because it's fair but also as the way to support the creation of great new stuff. The creators need to realize, in turn, that they're not going to get rich overnight doing this, not until someone proves that audience and advertisers will make it profitable. And there are new ventures being started by not-so-big-boys that aren't making any money yet. But this has to be seen as a partnership or it won't work. animal sex clip
If it is seen as a partnership and if it does work, I'll now bet you'll be hearing your neighbor on some form of radio and seeing your coworker on some form of TV just as you are reading your friends in this, some form of publishing, sooner than you can imagine. animal sex clip
Exploding media: distribution
: I have seen the prototype for the future of TV and it is my son's PSP (bought with his own hard-earned money, I might add).animal sex clip
Doc Searls said that the iPod is a prototype for the future of radio. As the transistor led to the transistor radio and that led to rock 'n' roll, so the iPod is a prototype for a future when we get any programming we want anywhere anytime (now it's downloaded but soon enough it will be on-demand via ubiquitious broadband). animal sex clip
That made sense for me with radio. I was willing to preach the same sermon about TV but didn't fully believe that gospel because I hadn't seen a hybrid device that would make TV worth watching (that is, there's little value to watching TV on a phone; you might as well just listen). animal sex clip
Well, the PSP screen is magnificent and now, already, content is being distributred to it. Here's a NY Times story about this and here are two PaidContent links about it. animal sex clip
Exploding media: advertising
: Forrester says that 64 percent of advertisers are looking at advertising on blogs. animal sex clip
Now we have to make it easy for them. (Insert plug for open-source ad calls here.)animal sex clip
The clear conclusion of the Forrester survey is that much, much, much more money is going to go online and leave other media: "Despite significant changes in consumer behavior, there is a large disparity between the amount of time consumers are spending online and the money marketers are spending trying to reach them online," says Forrester Research Principal Analyst Charlene Li. "When at-work Internet use is taken into consideration, online consumers spend more than one-third of their time online -- roughly the same amount of time they spend watching TV. Yet marketers spend only 4 percent of ad budgets online versus 25 percent on TV." ...animal sex clip
* Search engine marketing will grow by 33 percent in 2005, reaching $11.6 billion by 2010. Display advertising, which includes traditional banners and sponsorships, will grow at the average rate of 11 percent over the next five years to $8 billion by 2010.animal sex clip
* New advertising channels will draw interest and spending from marketers. Sixty-four percent of respondents are interested in advertising on blogs, 57 percent through RSS and 52 percent on mobile devices, including phones and PDAs.animal sex clip
* Marketers are quickly losing confidence in the effectiveness of traditional advertising channels and feel that online channels will become more effective over the next three years. Seventy-eight percent of survey respondents said they think search engine marketing will be more effective, compared with 53 percent of respondents who said TV advertising would become less effective. See also Mary Meeker's crystal ball. animal sex clip
Hypocritical Disney
: ABC refused to take the United Church of Christ's commercial promoting acceptance but did take a commercial from the guy who promotes spanking children, James Dobson and his so-called Focus on Family. animal sex clip
The UCC now sends out ABC's excuse: "The network doesn't take advertising from religious groups. It's a long-standing policy," said Susan Sewell, an ABC spokeswoman, in a Religion News Service story by Kevin Eckstrom on Wednesday evening. And they compare that with the Focus on Family mission statement: To cooperate with the Holy Spirit in disseminating the Gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible, and, specifically, to accomplish that objective by helping to preserve traditional values and the institution of the family. And its " guiding principles": Since Focus on the Family's primary reason for existence is to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ through a practical outreach to homes, we have firm beliefs about both the Christian faith and the importance of the family. This ministry is therefore based upon five guiding philosophies that are apparent at every level throughout the organization. These "pillars" are drawn from the wisdom of the Bible and the Judeo-Christian ethic, rather than from the humanistic notions of today's theorists. In short, Focus on the Family is a reflection of what we believe to be the recommendations of the Creator Himself, who ordained the family and gave it His blessing. Smells pretty damned religious to me. animal sex clip
Disney, you are busted. animal sex clip
Takes one to know one
: Brent Bozell, self-appointed national censor for the so-called Parents Television Council, reacts to yesterday's announcement of a group to finally oppose him -- TV Watch: Garin took aim at the conservative Parents Television Council, which regularly peppers the FCC with complaints and has managed to mount a vociferous campaign for government regulation. "The Parents Television Council is trying to invent an alternative reality that really doesn't exist," said Garin.animal sex clip
But the PTC countered by pointing out that TV Watch is funded by the parent companies of three of the four major broadcast networks.animal sex clip
"This supposed 'coalition' needs to be taken - and dismissed - for what it is," said PTC President L. Brent Bozell, "a collection of random citizen and public policy groups that have simply been hired and paid for by the networks to do their dirty work." Pot, meet Kettle. Bozell's PTC is a "supposed 'coalition'" if I've ever smelled one. animal sex clip
And, no, Brent, I'm not paid to fight you. animal sex clip
Brent, you say TV Watch needs to disclose their funding. They did. So did I. The networks listed -- three of the big for, which is to say everybody but dickless Disney -- paid for the survey and the pretty logo.animal sex clip
But now that you mention it, Brent...animal sex clip
Do you pay the ladies who count up "damns" and "hells" on TV? Don't you pay your staff to do what you do? Do you pay yourself? How much of the $4 million you raise on your fancy letterhead goes into your pocket and pays your expenses (alongside your other supposed coalitions)?animal sex clip
Come on, Brent, why don't we talk about the real issue: The First Amendment. These are good people, good citizens who are speaking out to defend it... against you. animal sex clip
May 04, 2005
Prime Time Jive
: The tawdriest angle in Prime Time Live's tawdry story about American Idol and Paula Abdul tonight was that ABC thought this was a news story worth an hour of prime time. animal sex clip
The next reality show: The Jilted Lovers Hour. animal sex clip
The deck chair beat
: Terry Heaton's getting lots of well-deserved links for his open rant to TV news people whoa re not paying attention to the future. Where is the passion to get out in front of where the industry is going? TV newspeople are generally curious and intelligent, so this puzzles me. If you're not moving in that direction, you're moving in the opposite direction, for there is no standing still in this rapidly changing environment. I'm reminded of the FedEx commercial where the woman informs the new worker that his help is needed. Upon learning that the problem is in shipping, he says, "But I have an MBA."animal sex clip
Secondly, TV newspeople are reluctant to assist in the economic well-being of the companies for which they work. This is a very dangerous time for broadcasting. 2005 is the nervous-breakdown year, and yet you are concerned with your resume tape and growing your broadcasting career while the foundation upon which it's built is crumbling. Again, you are supposedly intelligent people. Why would you do that? It's not just local TV news, Terry. animal sex clip
Isn't this a wonderful world?
: While tending the inspiring new Global Voices harvest of blogs around the world, Rebecca MacKinnon comes across something remarkable that seems to be legit: An all-girl Afghan band called the Burka Band. Listen to their single, Burka Blue. animal sex clip
: LATER: Jeff Hess was, like me, dubious at first but then saw all the press the Burka Band has gotten in Europe and so he says: It wasn’t the Peacemaker nor the Trident that brought down the Soviet Union, it was Coca Cola and Levi’s. Will Rock ‘n’ Roll topple the mullahs? Could be. Better yet, a girl band. animal sex clip
Radio made the video star
: Tonight Brian Lehrer, one of the best interviewers on radio, started a new TV show with the City University of New York on NYC cable and the internet. I always like being on Brian's WNYC radio show because he pushes me with his questions and doesn't just listen to blather; he thinks about the stories he's telling; and he's good with callers, which isn't easy. So I was delighted to be one of the first guests on the TV show. I was part of a segment about the videos that got hundreds of Republican National Convention protesters (and bystanders) freed: The power of citizens' media. You can watch the first show here. His first season lasts another eight week, every Wednesday at 7p. animal sex clip
: Oh, and the Lehrer show put out a call for you to send them video that illustrates the real New York. Calling all vloggers. Hey Rocketboom and Unmediated.org: Send in your videos!animal sex clip
Pot calls kettle hot
: NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin writes a most befuddling column today calling blogs "amoral." animal sex clip
His excuse: An NPR reporter put up the redacted report on the shooting of the car carrying an Italian communist journalist/hostage in Iraq and bloggers discovered when they downloaded it that they could read and reported the redacted pieces, including some that affect security. Thus, Dvorkin concludes: ...the blogosphere has proven once again to be an amoral place with few rules. The consequences for misbehavior are still vague. The possibility of civic responsibility remains remote. It is a place where the philosophy of "who posts first, wins" predominates. Somebody put a leash on that dinosaur. animal sex clip
Because a blogger does something you say is wrong, Mr. Dvorkin, all bloggers are now amoral? By that logic, then, when someone at NPR says something liberal, then all of NPR is liberal. (Hmmm.) And if a reporter lies then all reporters lie?animal sex clip
NPR screwed up but when that's discovered it's the bloggers who are amoral?animal sex clip
Few rules? Actually, there are many rules -- but they're not necessarily your rules, they are the rules of the public you serve. They sometimes have different rules and often, sir, you and your network and our profession fail their rules. Who made Dan Rather honest? Journalists or bloggers?animal sex clip
You dismiss bloggers and their rules and thus your audience and the public in one broad slap. You separate yourself from the public you want to serve. animal sex clip
And you do so with attitude: "Once again," you say without links or citations, "once again" blogs prove to be amoral. Give us your evidence, please. animal sex clip
Civic responsibility? I'd say that blogs are a living expression of civic responsibility -- they are the citizens holding the powerful responsible. What could be a better expression?animal sex clip
As for the attitude that he who posts first wins: Well, isn't that how all news media -- yes, even NPR -- act? Do you really want to be 10th with the big story?animal sex clip
Now get aloada this NPR hubris: At the same time, readership for newspapers and viewers of network television news continue to fall.animal sex clip
Public radio -- for the moment -- seems exempt from that trend. Public radio's listenership continues to rise. But NPR needs to know what it is doing right to attract these new listeners. Is there a downside to this growth? I honestly don't understand his point? Is popular success cooties for an NPR hand? animal sex clip
He goes on to say that media is edging close to bloggers -- even on NPR: Even one of NPR's newest programs, Day To Day is collaborating with Slate.com, the online magazine. On NPR, these online journalists contribute their editorial perspectives and edgy insights -- with gasps of dismay from some listeners and occasionally from the ombudsman too. It's not just blogs he finds distasteful. It's the internet. animal sex clip
He continues: The appeal of the blogs? Humor seems to be the biggest attraction. Ironic detachment from the news, an ability to deflate egos and refreshing, undisguised opinion are also valued. All are antithetical to most news organizations. Deflating the powerful and self-important used to be a hallmark of journalism, until it became powerful and self-important itself. animal sex clip
Humor? Hey, we're human. When you don't laugh at the absurd in the news -- and there's plenty that absurd and funny -- you once again separate yourself from the public. You snot up the news. You make the news dull and pompous. And you wonder why people turn elsewhere?animal sex clip
"Undisguised opinion"? Beats the hell out of disguised opinion, which is what too much of the public sees in too much journalism. American newspapers traditionally and scrupulously segregate fact-based reporting from opinion by designating pages for each. Radio and television try to ensure that opinion remains secondary to reporting. Conclusions should be drawn warily. Bloggers tend not to care if they, and their readers conflate opinion and fact. It's part of the appeal of the blogosphere.animal sex clip
As news organizations fight to regain their battered credibility and vanishing audiences, the blogs and the number of people who read them continue to grow. The blogs entertain, they provoke, and they are not constrained by journalistic standards of truth telling. Well, many would argue with your first assertion. But even so, if new organizations do such a good job of this, as you say, then why must they now "fight ot regain their battered credibility and vanishing audiences"? animal sex clip
In an attempt to find allies -- fellow dinosaurs huddling against the cold of their ice age -- Dvorkin quotes the outgoing ombudsman of the Washington Post: The ombudsman at The Washington Post, Michael Getler, has made similar complaints about his e-mail being clogged by the blogs. In other words, if Dvorkin is quoting him correctly, he is complaining about readers clogging the email of the person charged with listening to readers. You call it a "clog," I call it a conversation. animal sex clip
And actually, Mr. Ombudsman, I think it would be wrong to reveal information from that report that could compromise security. I'll bet even some of the people who did it would think it is wrong if they realized what they were doing. And so perhaps the better thing in your role would be to try to educate them and teach them the values of journalism to improve the public discourse. Instead, you sneer at it. animal sex clip
Or should I say you roar at it?animal sex clip
Fighting for the First Amendment
: I signed onto TV Watch, an organization unveiled today that "opposes government control of television programming and promotes the use of parental controls" -- or as I would put it, opposes the FCC/religious-fringe jihad against the First Amendment. animal sex clip
All I'm really doing is lending my name and quote, along with others on a bipartisan list, in the cause of defending free speech. But I am delighted that someone is finally stepping forward to give Congress and the FCC cover to defend the First Amendment against assaults from the so-called Parents Television Council and others who would use government to censor what we can see (and hear and read and click on).animal sex clip
TV Watch released a survey that says Americans prefer to chose their own entertainment and don't want government to do it: : 86 percent of Americans say more parental involvement is the best way to keep kids from seeing what they shouldn’t see. 11 percent say the government should increase control and enforcement of network television programming. animal sex clip
: By nearly four to one, Americans say more government regulation is not the solution, personal responsibility is.animal sex clip
: 91 percent of Americans – and 80 percent of those who say they “often” see things they feel should not have been aired – say that “some people will always be able to find something on the television or radio that offends them. But the sensitivities of a few should not dictate the choices for everyone else.” animal sex clip
: Even among the most sensitive viewers, those who “often” find television content objectionable, 74 percent of respondents said they prefer “people exercising personal choice over what they watch on television,” and not “government regulation of what is appropriate.” Here are some quotes from fellow signatories (some of them roped in by me): : “Freedom of expression is more than the sum of individual free speech rights. It's part of a larger culture – a democratic culture – with a robust public sphere of inquiry, learning, art, and political debate. To protect freedom of expression we must do more than prevent government restraints. We must encourage and support the institutions and practices that make the public sphere healthy and vibrant, and that give everyone, rich and poor alike, a chance to participate.”
-- Jack Balkin, professor, Yale Law School animal sex clip
“The solution to the problem of objectionable content for some is not heavy-handed government regulation that chills free expression for everyone. Rather, parents and consumers need more choices – better choices – and better information about those choices, so they can decide for themselves what to watch and what to avoid. That’s not just better for creative artists – it’s better for all Americans.”
--Jonathan Rintels, executive director, Center for Creative Voices in Media animal sex clip
“Why would we give more control to government when consumers have all the control they need over their individual TV sets? If the FCC has the power to remove or alter programs that you don't like, it also has the ability to kill programs that you love. That’s why it makes no sense to empower Washington bureaucrats when we can use the tools we have to decide for ourselves and our children which programs we watch."
-- Braden Cox, Technology Council, Competitive Enterprise Institute. animal sex clip
"One of the FCC's original missions was to promote cultural diversity. But the indecency warriors threaten that mission. Creativity flourishes in an environment of free speech."
-- Susan Crawford, professor, Cardozo Law Schoolanimal sex clip
“Instead of forcing yet more government regulation on the American public, it is time we find a solution that respects the rights of private citizens, the intelligence of the American consumer and the role of a limited government.”
-- Nick Gillespie, editor Reason magazine animal sex clip
"Right now, the FCC only hears from a few well-funded, politically motivated groups. Despite their claims, they don’t speak for the majority of Americans. It’s time for the rest of us to speak up and tell the government that we don’t want them limiting free expression based on one group’s idea of ‘good taste.’"
-- Amanda Toering, director of SpeakSpeakanimal sex clip
”I don’t like many things on television, but I also don’t want the government determining what I can watch. A fundamental conservative principle is at stake here – protection against a big government dictating how we should live.”
-- Stacie Rumenap, deputy director, American Conservative Union animal sex clip
”This is about individual rights and responsibilities. If we increase government control over this powerful medium, politically correct enforcement of TV will follow the next liberal into the White House. We don't need the PC police deciding what is appropriate programming.”
-- Grover Norquist, president, Americans for Tax Reformanimal sex clip
"We must protect the First Amendment and our right to free speech from efforts to regulate media – television, cable, satellite, or internet – that try to silence anything that could offend anyone. This lowest-common-denominator approach is driving the best creativity off TV, it is putting a chill on public discourse, and most important, it is interfering with parents' rights to set our own standards for or children. The remote control gives us all the power we need. We don't need to give that power to the government."
-- Me The survey was funded by media companies (members include News Corp. and Viacom -- both of which are fighting FCC fines, at last -- and NBC Universal). No one is paid to be involved. animal sex clip
The organization promotes more information, ratings, and use of the V chip. I've said in the past that I'm not a great fan of the V chip (because it, too, allows the nannies to complain and get content that offends them marked with the scarlet V). But it's what we have and so I certainly agree that information and the chip beats the hell out of government censorship. animal sex clip
And I strongly believe that it is time for Americans to rise up and oppose the fringers and nannies and defend the most precious principle of American democracy: free speech. animal sex clip
: More of my posts and rants on the topic here. animal sex clip
: Reuters story on the launch here. Broadcasting & Cable's here. animal sex clip
Biz blogs
: By the way, Business Week's blogs are good and they're on my RSS list (except they keep crashing FeedDemon on me). animal sex clip
Pussycat press
: Matt at 1115.org (a good blog with which I intermittently agree and not) has a worthwhile discussion about the tactics of a press corps that goes for getting in its questions more than getting answers, a press corps that doesn't keep pushing until it gets answers. animal sex clip
Fly naked, redux
: Now there are fears that women will wear exploding bras, set to go off when they are frisked. Scotland Yard has sent details of the bombs - which are primed to go off as the wearer is frisked by security staff - to all the major airports, including busy Heathrow and Gatwick.animal sex clip
The memo warns one suicide bomber in Colombo, Sri Lanka, killed herself and four police officers. "The device exploded as the attacker was being searched by two female constables," it says.animal sex clip
"The police have determined she was wearing an improvised explosives-laden bra wired to detonate if tampered with." ....animal sex clip
One anti-terrorist officer said: "It may sound a little silly but you can't take anything for granted these days."animal sex clip
The bombers lull officers into a false sense of security by showing their bare midriff to prove they are not wearing a "bomb jacket" - but then the bra explodes. If this weren't so sick and so real, it'd be a straightline with so many punchlines. animal sex clip
Back in December, 2001, when a twit tried to blow up a plane with a bomb in his shoe, I said the only solution is to fly naked. animal sex clip
: In the comments, it was Eileen, not me, who couldn't restrain herself and called this a booby trap.animal sex clip
: And in unrelated bra news...animal sex clip
Next: ConCon
: Plans for the first PodcastCon -- at UNC over some weekend -- are underway. animal sex clip
May 03, 2005
Atoms suck
: Yesterday, I linked to posts that drew parallels among the rust in newspapers and autos and education and here's a column that draws another parallel: theme parks. animal sex clip
Bottom line: In our new flat world, you want to work in digits. Atoms suck.
animal sex clip
The reaggregated news
: Matt McAlister takes Hypergene's great Del.icio.us links and turns them into a newsfeed on The Industry Standard. animal sex clip
Hyperlocal launch: Backfence.com
: BackFence.com, the hyperlocal venture started by Mark Potts (ex WashingtonPost.com), is up and it looks very good. animal sex clip
I am days (I hope) away from launching town blogs in three day-job markets and they will look quite similar because Mark and I have lshared notes and have long been following the same good local efforts -- most notably, NorthwestVoice.com and GoSkokie -- and have long agreed about what a town web site can and should be. animal sex clip
The question remains for all of us what a town web site will be once it is handed over to the people. Will they write? Will they read? Will they talk? Will they advertise? I believe they will. Mark is betting a new company on the belief that they will. And so it is a brave move to be the guy to do that. animal sex clip
If Backfence succeeds a lot of good things come out of it for local news: We'll get more news, more conversation, more viewpoints, and a new medium for very local advertising to support all that. animal sex clip
Milking the horse: The funny vote
: Laura Bush's stand-up routine was a notable political moment:animal sex clip
It was about trying to recapture the funny vote: the vast voting public with a sense of humor. It was about trying to be real people (not self-righteous prigs). animal sex clip
Last week, Glenn Reynolds said that the Republicans try to fight down the image of being the party of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson while the Democrats try to fight down the image of being the party of Jane Fonda. animal sex clip
In other words, they try to distance themselves from self-righteous prigs. I do believe that Americans are are sick and tired of the prig fringe. animal sex clip
This was a message to both sides: It was a message to Kerry voters that "we have more fun." And, with horse dick jokes, I do think it was a message to the religious right: "We need to lighten up."animal sex clip
In his Times column today, John Tierney says the Bushes -- and, they hope, their backers -- are coming out as real people: Mrs. Bush's performance, and her husband's reaction, wasn't a shock to the reporters who cover the White House. For years they have tried to convince their friends outside Washington that Mr. Bush is actually not a close-minded dolt, and Mrs. Bush is no Stepford Wife or Church Lady. Yes, they're Texans who go to church and preach family values, but they're not yahoos or religious zealots...animal sex clip
The favorite Democratic explanation is that the red staters are hicks who have been blinded by righteousness, as Thomas Frank argues in "What's the Matter With Kansas?" He laments that middle-class Kansans are so bamboozled by moral issues like abortion and school prayer that they vote for Republicans even though the Republican tax-cutting policies are against their self-interest....animal sex clip
One of the main reasons they like him is that he gets bashed so often. When Jon Stewart sneers at him, they empathize because they're used to being sneered at themselves.animal sex clip
They know what their image is in Manhattan and Hollywood, and they know they're not all that different from the Democrats in those places. They, too, watch "Desperate Housewives," and they're not surprised to hear Laura Bush doing Chippendales jokes. They've spent their own dollar bills there. They don't see anything the matter with that - or with themselves. It's a clever political move, for it's a lot easier to get people to like you -- and vote for you -- when you're laughing along than when you're trying to duck spit. animal sex clip
May 02, 2005
Blog to Bill
: Engadget snags an interview with Bill Gates. The humility is a bit overpowering: The piece starts telling us what we won't read (somebody buy Pete a course in Calacanis hype!). But it covers lots of territory, starting with games, in two parts. animal sex clip
This is the guy who wants to tell us how to parent?
: Max Blumenthal reports that James Dobson -- the scary guy who wants to censor what you watch and tell you how to parent -- ran ads on ABC while a church could not: During [Sunday's] season finale of ABC's schlocky reality show, "Supernanny," James Dobson's Focus on the Family will be running ads promoting its "Focus on Your Child" program, which advises parents on how to implement the parenting principles outlined in his best-seller, "Dare to Discipline." These include spanking with "sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely." Children have to be taught respect for authority at an early age, Dobson preaches, or they'll never develop respect for governmental authority or God.animal sex clip
Dobson's theory on corporal punishment reveals the political underside of his self-help work....animal sex clip
Once parents bite Focus's bait and join up, they may learn some valuable techniques for improving their relationship with their children. At the same time, they will become immersed in the subculture of the Christian right, where they will meet Macho Jesus and the gay/pedophile deviants who are out to destroy the very fabric of their marriage. Family counseling is merely the net Dobson casts to bring folks on board with his political agenda.animal sex clip
Focus's ad buy is its first in prime time TV. It has ostensibly purchased the ads through its 501 c-3, the self-help component of its organization, so it can claim legally that the ads are not political. But they are, and it's absurd to say they're not. On his radio show, Dobson shamelessly begs for money for his 501 c-4, Focus on the Family Action, his organization's political arm. FOF Action is the entity which collaborated with the Family Research Council to bring us the memorable event known as "Justice Sunday," where Dobson blamed the Supreme Court for "the worst Holocaust in human history." Given that the political and family components of Dobson's empire are so indistinguishable, I think it would be appropriate and necessary to file a complaint with the FCC over Focus's insidious ad buy.animal sex clip
Furthermore, ABC's accomodation of Focus smacks of hypocrisy. Last winter, ABC's broadcast network refused to an ad by the United Church of Christ promoting its inclusive policy to gays and other groups explicity forbidden from belonging to churches under the ideological sway of Dobson and his ilk. animal sex clip
Stacking the FCC deck
: Last week, I linked to a report that Sen. Ted Stevens, the bozo who's trying to expand FCC censorship to cable and satellite, is trying to install his aide on the FCC. animal sex clip
Now comes word at Broadcasing & Cable that Sen. Sam Brownback, the scary guy who's pushing for censorship harder than anyone in the Senate, is now trying to get a former aide of his on the FCC.animal sex clip
Anybody want to nominate Howard Stern? Opie? Me?animal sex clip
Desperate censors
: I have to believe that in the Bozell and Dobson households and in the homes of church ladies across the land, an angry and disappointed groan was heard when Laura Bush said she watches Desperate Housewives. In my house, you could hear a gratified cackle. animal sex clip
: LATER: Sure enough, the Washington Times frets. animal sex clip
Presses rust, too
: A few posts ago, Jay Rosen wrote a provocative essay about newspaper management laying newspapers gently down to die. Last week, Ad Age had a guest column (not online, damn them) about General Motors as caretaker management that is essentially doing the same thing by not investing in the future. And today, Jenny DeMonte blogs and brings this together, seeing parallels among GM, journalism, and education. animal sex clip
A wi-fi in every pot
: Micah Sifry, who's helping out in Andrew Rasiej's campaign for NYC's Public Advocate, sent me text of a speech Andrew gave today at City Hall criticizing a Bloomberg report on communications and drawing a line in the sand at universal and inexpensive wi-fi for all. Hell, if Philadelphia can have it, why can't we? I'll be this will become an issue in every city -- and then suburb -- in the nation. No more letting Korea lead. No more letting telecom companies keep us back. We need to be connected to this connected world. Anything less is like not having indoor plumbing. animal sex clip
: Just to make clear, since some commenters didn't get it, I'm not advocating government-run ISPs. I'm advocating government freeing up the means for industry to provide this service: Give the city ubiquitious and decently priced service and you get on our poles. Everybody benefits... except the old telecom dinosaur.animal sex clip
: See also Smartmobs reporting that Dell is opposing bills that back by telecom dinosaurs that would prevent local governments from encouraging ubiquitous broadband. The dinos are afraid they'd be put out of business by decent competition. Dell is afraid that the telecoms will succeed only in holding back the adoption of technology that will expand everyone's business, including Dell's. Dell is right. animal sex clip
Runaway (bride) story
: Aw, come on: The runaway bride story is great entertainment, to be sure. The pictures of that deer caught in the headlights are mesmerizing. The tale of a wedding from hell gone to hell is amusing. But, come on Today et al, is this really the top news story in the country?animal sex clip
: UPDATE ON THE STORY WITH NO UPDATES: Just saw on MSNBC a press gang the size of Michael Jackson's staking out the cops now wondering whether to charge bright-eyes with anything. animal sex clip
: NEIGHBOR BLOGS: From the comments: Kingdom2000 happens to be a neighbor wide-eyes in Duluth and blogs about the invasion of the press and about the town. animal sex clip
Pod(cast) people
: It had to kill podcast pioneer Adam Curry and Sirius that Viacom and its YOURadio beat them to the punch with an announcement, but it's still big and good news that Curry is going to host four hours of podcast programming -- citizens' radio -- on Sirius. animal sex clip
Trees rejoice
: The Wall Street Journal (free link) says newspaper circulation is taking a dive: Circulation numbers to be released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations probably will show industrywide declines of 1% to 3%, according to people familiar with the situation -- possibly the highest for daily newspapers since the industry shed 2.6% of subscribers in 1990-91. If they depend just on the old, big, one-size-fits-all product then, yes, that's bad news. And if, in the case of one of at least one of the companies listed in the story, a big drop comes from cleaning up circ fraud, well, that's very bad news. animal sex clip
But if print media spread out across new media -- online, mobile, multimedia -- and new, niche products -- ethnic, entertainment, handout -- then that's good news: the mass market becomes the mass of niches; the audience is served where and when it wants to be served. And if that happens, circulation in the big, one-size-fits-all print products will decline and it will not be bad news. Lot of if's there. animal sex clip
: The Journal also has an online poll asking: "What is the main reason for declines in newspaper circulation?: Diminished quality; Online alternatives; Hassle of recycling; Biased reporting; Something else." Online is the clear winner at this hour. animal sex clip
May 01, 2005
A war in search of an analogy
: They kept trying to say that our war in Iraq was Vietnam (or the Soviet Afghanistan): the no-win quagmire. But that dog didn't hunt. So the search is for another analogy and Peter Maas returns from a brave trip with Iraqi counterinsurgency forces and thinks he has it in today's NY Times magazine: The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, to which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high -- more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. animal sex clip
...[big snip]...animal sex clip
In El Salvador, Honduras, Peru, Turkey, Algeria and other crucibles of insurgency and counterinsurgency, the battles went on and on. They were, without exception, dirty wars. Well, yes, it's a dirty war (isn't every war?)... It's a dirty war when "insurgents" and imported murderers and deluded suicidal fanatics blow up and behead innocent civilians. Is it dirtier to stop them? animal sex clip
Fighting the PC war
: Tonight's 60 Minutes tried to act as if it blew the lid off Guantanamo Bay... but the worst they got from Sgt. Erik Saar, a former translator now cashing in on his time on the island with a book, is this about a female officer and a detainee: "As she stood in front of him, she slowly started to unbutton her army blouse. She had on underneath the Army blouse a tight brown Army T-shirt, touched her breasts, and said, 'Don't you like these big American breasts?'" says Saar. "She wanted to create a barrier between this detainee and his faith, and if she could somehow sexually entice him, he would feel unclean in an Islamic way, he would not be able to pray and go before his God and gain that strength, so the next day, maybe he would be able to start cooperating, start talking to her." And then she unbuttoned her pants, acted as if she was getting menstrual blood on her fingers -- actually ink -- and put it on the prisoner, telling him her could not bathe and thus cleanse himself of this sin before praying. animal sex clip
Saar says she did this to a Saudi who took flying lessons in the U.S. He says this is a guy who should be locked away forever. animal sex clip
Now the technique may be infantile or ridiculous or stupid. But it is not torture. animal sex clip
And if this Saudi was taking flying lessons in the U.S. -- do we sense a pattern? -- then I see nothing wrong with trying use his own ridiculous views of women to get intelligence out of him to try to prevent the next mass murder. animal sex clip
CBS correspondent Scott Pelley says just what he should say: "You know, there are people at home watching this right now, saying, 'Hey, you've got to do what you've got to do.'" But the sarge replies that the technique isn't effective. Well, sarge, I'd say that's not up to you to decide. You're a translator -- before you decided to make a buck off dissing your former colleagues. animal sex clip
There are mentions of other allegations at Guantamamo and frankly I would not be surprised -- and would disapprove -- if physical torture were used. And I don't doubt Saar's contention that most of the detainees are inconsequential (but who knows which ones?).There are mentions of the contentions of the prisoners, but I'd take those with a block of salt. There are no smoking cattle prods here. FBI memos mentioned in the report alleged a few bent thumbs and over-zealous duct-taping. But it's still not torture. It's war. Yet this report acts as if we must conduct that war under PC terms: Can't offend this Saudi who took flying lessons in the U.S. No, that would be wrong. animal sex clip
Uh, who says? animal sex clip
No nuclear secrets
: The NY Times reports today on a revolution-via-blog carried out at even the highly secret Los Alamos National Lab. Several outside experts said that the director's quick departure was inevitable and that the blog's attacks were playing a significant role.animal sex clip
"Nanos is leaving," said Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a private organization in Albuquerque that monitors weapons laboratories. "The blog changed the climate, giving people an outlet they didn't have before."animal sex clip
Blogs seem to be everywhere. But this one is unusual, in that the Los Alamos National Laboratory, isolated in the mountains of New Mexico, has a long history of maintaining the highest level of federal secrecy. The lab's very existence was once classified. Today, barbed wire rings many of its buildings, federal agents monitor its communications, and its employees are constantly reminded that loose lips sink ships. I was called and quoted on it, saying that this isn't really about blogs but about citizens empowered. Blogs happen to be the catalyst. The ethic of transparency is sweeping the land. animal sex clip
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JEFF JARVIS is former TV critic for TV Guide and People, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday editor and associate publisher of the NY Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner. He was until recently president & creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications. Now he is working with The New York Times Company at About.com on content development and strategy and consulting for Advance, Fairchild, and the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism, where he lead the creation of the curriculum for the new media program. He says he is at work on a book.
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