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BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis
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October 31, 2003
Interactive media:
: Pretty cool: The University of Giessen in Germany has a Center for Interactive Media. And it's having a conference. One session: "What comes after the death of newspapers?" (all in German)
Everything old is old again
: I'm signing up for Napster; I click on rock; it touts music "just added" -- Simon & Garfunkle, John Prine, Elvis Presley, Elton John, and The Who. Wow. Napster was gone for longer than I thought.
Back
: I'm back from my confab. Blogging later. Getting high-speed again feels like getting air again.
The manly phone
: Howard Stern has my phone, which means that I now have the hip phone. He was showing off his new Treo 600 to the gang this morning. He takes a picture so we can all hear the neat sound it makes. He is proud.
And this leads to a game of phoneupsmanship with Crazy Cabbie, the overnight guy.
Howard says his phone is the best. Cabbie says his phone and the next one he's getting are better.
Howard shows off a picture of his girlfriend in her panties on his phone.
Cabbie shows off pictures of his naked girlfriend on his phone.
: This is so much better than my last phone. I used to carry the sleek, incredibly thin, silver Sanyo 6000. When I got it, two years ago, a friend of mine played phoneupsmanship when I brought it out and put it on the table for all to admire.
"Hmmmmph," he grunted. "Do they make one of those for guys?"
Well, I now have the manly phone.
October 30, 2003
It's the peace, stupid
: If we don't win the peace in Iraq, we will lose the war.
The World Trade Center
: The Port Authority has announced that the World Trade Center PATH station will reopen on Nov. 23. The same train that was the last to go there -- the train I was on -- will be the first to go there again.
I want to be on that train. Oh, how I want to be on that train.
: They have also announced that finalists for the memorial competition will be announced by Nov. 17. As soon as they are announced and all of us contestants are freed from our silence, I will put up my entry here.
: Tonight, I sat with a table of very nice people at a journalism confab and quite to my surprise, 9/11 came up and I ended up telling my story again. It's always hard, but still gratifying to talk about it.
I went to dinner off-kilter for many reasons and talking about this with people who cared oddly helped.
Every day brings another reminder: Life has changed.
When the audience advertises to itself
: There's an old rule about preaching a sermon that advises: Tell them what you're going to tell them... Tell them... Then tell them what you've told them.
Now marketing -- particularly and led by political marketing -- is twisting that 180 degrees in this age of me media: We'll ask you what you want to hear.... You'll tell us what you want to hear... Then we'll have you tell yourselves what you want to hear.
At Bloggercon, the DNC said the use weblogs and interactivity to hear voters tell the party what the party already believes so the party can then turn around and convince more voters of this belief using voters' words.
Yesterday, many of us reported on MoveOn's contest to have the audience create Bush-smashing commercials to play to the audience to smash Bush.
Now Steven Johnson (who tried to create his own political commercial recently) reports that the Dean campaign is having the voters come up with a slogan for voters to shout.
What goes around comes around in whole new ways.
Shhhhh
: You can subscribe to the Federation of American Scientists' secrecy newsletter. [via Die Zeit]
October 29, 2003
 The blog capital of the world
: New Yorkers and San Franciscans are known to debate whose city is the blog capital of the world.
They're all wrong.
It's Tehran.
Hoder reports the opening of a Cafe Blog in Tehran -- not just an Internet cafe but a blog cafe! Hoder didn't just start a weblog revolution in Iran, he started a weblog industry. Photos from the opening here.
I'm not sure if there is any Cafe for bloggers in other cities, but there is one in Tehran. Actually it's recently opened in a northern area of Tehran and Ive heard that it's quite popular among Tehranian bloggers. It's called Cafe Blog and based on the website, they held some basic technical workshops for their members....
I wish I could have a trip to Iran this year. But it's too dangerous these days. Well, after the revolution, when it's safe to go, bring back a T-shirt, willya?
Whereabouts
: I'm at a two-day confab and stuck on dial-up so I'll be blogging when connected....
Post-online newspaper
: Steve Outing outlines his post-online newspaper vision here. I put the start of my vision here.
Two bits on audience
: I just saw (thanks to Lost Remote) that Reese Schonfeld, a cable news pioneer from CNN, has a blog -- Me And Ted -- and in it, I find two noteworthy observations:
:First, on the audience for FoxNews: Meandted.com readers may recall that I have wondered from whence the FoxNews viewers come.
I finally have an answer; it is uncorroborated and single source. I have not checked it out with FoxNews. My source is an occasional consultant to NewsAmerica, FoxNews’ parent company. She told me that Fox had looked into the question and most FoxNews viewers had switched from broadcast stations....
This makes some sense to me. Many years ago Paul Klein, one of the smartest men ever to work at a broadcast network, invented the theory of “Least Objectionable Program.” In the days of just three networks, he said viewers watched programs, not because they liked them, but because they didn’t dislike them.
I think that six years ago before FoxNews was launched the people who are now watching FoxNews couldn’t find any news network that satisfied them... And this on the real source of bias -- the audience: Journalistic “objectivity” is unachievable because objectivity is a two-way street. Both the newspaper and its reader have their own definition of “objectivity.” The same is true of television and the viewer. In each case the audience defines “objectivity” as the point of view that most closely mirrors his own prejudices.
On Thursday, the press reported that 44% of those polled thought the media was too liberal. 16% thought the media was too conservative. 39% thought the media was right on. Brent Bozell, who represents the conservative side, said during the show that 40% of Americans identified themselves as conservatives, 20% identified themselves, as liberal and the rest were moderates. Compare the sets of numbers: 40% are conservative – 44% think the media is liberal. 20% is liberal – 16% think the media is too conservative. 40% is middle of the road, 39% think the media is middle of the road. I think this proves my theory and I am very, very happy....
Given the above, it’s time for U.S. media to forget “objectivity” and just let it all hang out.
Case closed
: Detective Jay Rosen gets the Times Siegal Report back online.
French-fried fool
: Fast-food paranoid Eric Schlosser disses his fellow Americans to all Britain in, of course, the Guardian: I can't remember another time when having an American accent provoked as much immediate hostility from Brits of every race, creed, class, and sexual orientation. If you're an American, overseas, in the fall of 2003, you've got a lot to answer for.
If I could fake a British accent with any skill, I would now. It would save a lot time....
It's easy to hate Americans today, as the United States plays the global role Great Britain once did, opening new markets for investment, maintaining access to valuable commodities, and crushing anyone who poses a serious threat to the world order. [via au Currant]
Does he inhale?
: Howard Dean has called himself a metrosexual: Dean declared himself a "metrosexual," the buzz phrase for straight men in touch with their feminine sides, as he touted his accomplishments in "equal justice" for gay and lesbian couples.
But then he waffled.
"I'm a square," Dean declared, after professing his metrosexuality to a Boulder breakfast audience with an anecdote about being called handsome by a gay man. "I like (rapper) Wyclef Jean and everybody thinks I'm very hip, but I am really a square, as my kids will tell you. I don't even get to watch television. I've heard the term (metrosexual), but I don't know what it means." Ewww. The thought of anything ____sexual and Howard Dean brings up forbidden visuals. Keep it in your pants, Howie. [via Aaron Bailey]
Let's all make campaign commercials
: Ed Cone finds the latest from MoveOn: a call to make a 30-second commercial that "tells the truth about George Bush," the winner to be judged by Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Jack Black, Janeane Garofalo, and Gus Van Sant and aired on TV during the week of the State of the Union address.
I think it's time to brush up on my vlogging.
Somehow, I don't think I'll win.
But why don't we all sit down in front of the camera and make the commercials that should win.
Celebrity junkies
: Courtney Love has been busted on drugs: Prosecutors Tuesday charged singer-actress Courtney Love with two felony counts of drug possession.... She stands accused of possessing painkillers -- Hydrocodone and Oxycodone -- without a prescription. She faces more than three years in jail.
And so what does Rush Limbaugh face for acquiring thousands of the same pills?
Howard Stern said this morning that Jeb Bush can't exactly be out there saying he's tough on drugs but light on Rush.
: Steven Johnson on the coincidence.
Who's a reporter?
: In a wonderfully candid post about himself and his weblog today, Zeyad, the new Iraqi blogger, says: ...I must reiterate that I am not a journalist. I'm merely trying to give you an idea on how the average Iraqi think about such events, or what kind of stories are circulated on the streets. I must disagree. Zeyad is a journalist in a new (or very old) definition of the word. He is a reporter and is proving to be a damned good one.
Zeyad is reporting what he sees and feels and hears -- and thinks. He is the witness who tells the world what is happening around him. Just like the consummate pro Tish Durkin (see the next post below), he is doing a great job of trying to put us there in Baghdad, so we have a better idea of what is happening. That is a reporter's job.
: A few days ago, Zeyad had a post about a story circulating in the city, of a woman who supposedly brought a baby to a hospital wrapped in explosives. Says the tale: "After questioning the woman she confessed that the baby was kidnapped and that some Arabs had offered her a considerable amount of money to get the baby inside the crowded emergency hall in the hospital, leave it there and they would do the rest."
Having seen this nowhere else, I wrote it off at the time as urban legend. I figure there must be enough urban legend going around in Baghdad to choke Snopes.
What's interesting is that today, Zeyad addresses the issue of whether this story is credible or whether it is urban legend. He doesn't know. Iraqis have been talking about it since Friday. Nobody has either denied or confirmed it officially. I also read about it in Azzaman, an independent Iraqi newspaper published in Iraq and the UK and edited by Sa'ad Al-Bazzaz a highly respected Iraqi journalist. Saddam's Mukhabarat agents tried to assasinate him more than once in both Jordan and the UK. They never print urban legends or rumours. It is currently the number one newspaper in postwar Iraq. I highly doubt they would publish such a story without sufficient evidence. I tried hard searching for other sources but without any luck.
I didn't make up the story. And I would never put propaganda on this blog. You can check it out for yourself on their October 25 edition (if you can read Arabic). So Zeyad is learning to do what a reporter or an editor should do: check his stories. He is a journalist.
: There are more interesting notes in the post about the Riverbend blog and the blog that now mocks it.
Also, note that Zeyad has put up a biography of himself, with a picture.
It seems to me that he is being as open as he can.
There've been a few trollish posts on my blog about whether he's legit (a kneejerk response after those questioning Salam Pax -- all of whom were wrong). Well, I haven't met him and so I can't give you his DNA. But I haven't met Atrios or Andrew Sullivan, either, and I think they and their opionions are legit and worthwhile. You know Zeyad as well as I know Zeyad. I say we're lucky he's there.
: I've been engaging in a lot of excited blather lately about citizens' media and citizen journalists. This is why. Yes, it's exciting for me to see new layers and levels of information and perspective that can emerge now that the people formerly known as the audience have history's easiest publishing tool connected to history's best distribution network. It's exciting to see that in a town in America. But it's particularly exciting in a town in Iraq, where we can certainly use new levels of information and persective, especially from the people most affected. All the people who give us that information are reporting so we can decide what we think the real story is.
: Yes, Zeyad is a journalist. He's turning out to be such a good one that I just sent him email asking whether he really wanted to be dentist afterall.
It's about the people, stupid
: In all the rhetorical, ideological, and political catfights occurring over Iraq and the U.S., what is most disturbing is that the fate of the Iraqi people is too often forgotten (especially, I'd say, by those who supposedly had their interests at heart -- and you know who you are).
How ludicrous to be running anti-war rallies after the war is over. Day late, placard short.
What we should be doing now is falling over ourselves to be the ones who helped build the first successful democracy and well-rounded economy in the Middle East. Instead, everybody's yelling so loud about their divorce they're forgetting to feed the kids.
Tish Durkin finally captures this in the New York Observer: Most of the people outside Iraq seem to be obsessed with giving the Bush administration what they think it deserves. Most of the people inside Iraq—i.e., the Iraqis—are fixated on getting what they think they deserve. For all too many champions as well as critics of U.S. policy, this is all about American vindication versus American mortification, and Iraq is a car to be stripped down for its rhetorical parts. Some parts make the Americans look good, so the White House and company take those and wave them around. Other parts make the Americans look bad, so the antiwar crowd takes those and waves them around. Still other parts—most of the car, of course—are harder to classify, or are subject to change from one week to the next. These pretty much get junked.
For the Iraqis, who tend to view this as a place and themselves as people, both sets of analysts are transparent opportunists. Nonetheless, from here, it is disturbing to note the momentum that seems to be gathering behind those who are back home chanting for the U.S. to get out now. It is scarcely less disturbing to contemplate the belief of some leading American politicians that they can go halfsies: keep funding Iraqi reconstruction, for instance, but put the funding in the form of a loan. (Whoever thought of that probably had a cash bar at his wedding.) This is not because the occupation is some sort of triumph. But if this is about the Iraqis, it simply doesn’t matter whether it is in the context of American glory, American gloom or something in between that these people finally get a decent shot at a decent life. It only matters that they do get it, and the only question is how. Tish is reporting from the ground in Baghdad and here are her five conclusions now: One, most Iraqis do not want America to leave now or very soon. Two, while it is true that a huge proportion of Iraqis have at least some very negative opinions about the war and life here since, it is also true that a huge proportion of those opinions boil down to anger at the Americans for not being enough of a presence here, not anger at the Americans for being too much of a presence. Three, there is very little to support the notion that Iraqis would be, or feel, notably better off under United Nations occupation than under a United States–led occupation. Four, although the Bush administration should be hung out to dry for whatever it has lied about, it is widely accepted here that various of their pet assertions happen to coincide with the truth. Iraqis do not need Mr. Bush to tell them that most of the troublemakers here are not resistance fighters, but highly paid, often imported thugs; Iraqis have been saying that from the start. Fifth, a steady stream of terrible events has generated a steady stream of legitimately negative news stories about Iraq, the sum effect of which seems to have been to leave the rest of the world with the impression that Iraq now appears in the dictionary next to "unqualified disaster"; that hardly anything is improving here, and that hardly anyone. And she concludes this scolding view of the grownups' bickering: In or out? Aid or loan? It all adds up to asking: Which one should win the right to say "I told you so"?
It's a beautiful piece of reporting with a strong and credible viewpoint.
: I should add that I knew Tish when. At the start of Entertainment Weekly, we hired her out of college as an editorial assistant and during the interview, I still remember sitting there with jaw dropped thinking, "This woman is going to be a star." Got that one right.
October 28, 2003
Revolt against the editors
: There happens to be a lot of sniping at editors going around.
Here's Mickey Kaus firing one shot.
Here's Virginia Postrel taking aim with Norm Geras and others firing.
Stephen Green adds his gunpowder.
Not a growth industry, that.
New Hampshire bound
: In no time flat, Josh Marshall raised more than enough money to send him to New Hampshire to cover the primary exclusive for his weblog readers. The audience has spoken!
'Suiciders'
: I think George Bush just coined a new word for the suicide bombers (I call them human bombs) terrorizing the Middle East. In his press conference, he called them "suiciders." I thought it was a slip and then he called them that again. "Suiciders."
"Murderers" is still more accurate.
Star bloggers
: Kaye Trammel is doing her dissertation on celebrity bloggers (that is, celebrities who blog... though I would have thought that bloggers who become celebrities would be interesting, too.). So send her suggestions.
After the attacks
: Zeyad is pissed and for damned good reason. His view after the human-bomb attacks on Iraqi and outside civilians is that it's not about Saddam anymore: This Saddamophobia has to stop. Suicide attacks are carried out by you-know-who. This is Bin Ladens gift to his fellow Iraqi Muslims. Didn't he say it himself a while ago?
I demand that all Iraqi diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and Syria cease immediately. I demand that we expel all foreign Arabs from Iraq until further notice. A little firmness is necessary. We can't just sit and wait for the next attacks.
Iraq should resign from the Arab League which is just a symposium for dictators. Who the hell needs it anymore? They didn't even officially show sympathy for Iraqis after the attacks. They should be considered the enemy unless they act promptly to secure their borders and ensure that no Mujahedeen sneak through to Iraq daily. They are the ones to blame. We all know they have an interest in keeping up the attacks and the chaos. They are aware of the fact that they are next on the list after Saddam. They will pursue every possible effort to make the Iraqi example fail.
When attacks are carried out in other Arab countries they consider it terrorism, but in Iraq it is resistance against the occupying Americans.
What if the public hates public affairs?
: I dread Sunday mornings because TV and radio are filled with alleged "public affairs" programming, which is really just dutiful crap meant to appease bureaucrats and pressure groups. There are racial and ethnic segments that are essentially insulting to their apparent audiences (if the story is worth doing, then do it in prime time; don't ghettoize it here). There are political round-tables that make me want to crawl under the nearest table and fall asleep (and you wonder why people don't vote). And there are interviews with nut jobs pushing some nut view (just to stop them from bugging the newsroom, no doubt). I can't stand any of it. Public affairs programming has absolutely no value to me as a member of said public.
But there are forever pushes for more of it: programming by quota.
The Washington Times (of all publications) reports on a study by the "Alliance for Better Campaigns" [beware "alliances" for they are the folks who fill Sunday morning with snoozes] arguing there's too little public-affairs programming: Broadcasters have relegated local public-affairs programming to the very bottom of the heap — behind cartoons, kitchenware specials, reruns, courtroom dramas, dating shows and late-night talk shows.
The modest showcases for community issues account for less than one-half of 1 percent of local TV programming nationwide, said the report, released Friday by the Alliance for Better Campaigns, a Washington-based public interest group.
There is "a near blackout" of local politics by broadcasters, the study said.
Out of 7,560 hours of programming analyzed, 13 were devoted to local public affairs, it said. Forty-five stations in six cities were studied from Oct. 5 to Oct. 11.
The analysis found, for example, that there were three times as many "Seinfeld" reruns as local public-affairs shows on TV stations nationwide.
There were four times as many cartoon shows, seven times as many pro football games, nine times as many dating shows, 19 times as many late-night talk shows, 20 times as many courtroom dramas and 23 times as many soap operas. Hello? Where have you been? Shall we give you three quite obvious facts here:
1. TV is a business. It needs to make money. It makes money by giving the audience what it wants.
2. The audience wants entertainment. That's why TV gives the audience Seinfelds and football games.
3. The audience doesn't want public-affairs programming. The proof of that is in the ratings.
Reality check.
: But now let's pull that stick back and, from a higher elevation, ask what the appropriate outlets are for public affairs content and programming.
The FCC's mandate that TV stations had to have public-affiars programming as part of the public-service obligation of their license is outmoded. Media has leapfrogged it. Cable came along. The Internet came along.
And the truth is that TV is not the ideal medium for pubic affairs programming. That's because TV is first and foremost an entertainment medium, more than an information medium or an interactive medium. Second, broadcast TV hits too large an audience to be able to find and serve the various publics in fact interested in public affairs programming. Third, public-affairs issues are more local than a broadcaster's range. And fourth, public-affairs should be interactive; it should be about discussion and involvement, not about broadcasting.
Clearly, the Internet is a better medium for public-affairs issues and it is already doing a better job of serving the public interest in these areas -- without any FCC mandates. Local and special-interest weblogs and web sites present information and dialogue about issues.
So perhaps the broadcasters should be freed from their public-affairs obligation. You could go the route of the BBC and try to create public-involvement web service, but I wonder whether that's still not so much artificial insemination. Perhaps TV stations should just go about their business as TV stations and their audiences will tell them when they serve their interests.
Robbed
: Can somebody explain to me how I can have 682 inbound blogs on Technorati and still not make the Top 100, where five have fewer than that? I'm getting a complex.
Dig a whole deep enough and you'll find a blog on the other side
: Glenn Reynolds links to some pissiness about a CNN International feature about a Hong Kong blogger. Nevermind the complaints.
Big White Guy is a very good blog by an expat in Hong Kong. He gave us lively coverage during the Sars epidemic. He was ahead of all major media on the story of the Hong Kong story using swastikas in marketing. He blogs well.
No need to be jealous of somebody else getting airtime. What's good for one is good for all here in this new world.
(You can watch the feature on his site.)
 ...
Gawker stalked
: For reasons that will become clear next week, I ended up hanging out with a half-dozen bloggers yesterday. You'll note that no one blogged it; too intimidating. But I couldn't resist pulling out the camera phone and stalking Gawker, turnabout being fair play. So here's Nick Denton, hiding from the press. And there's Choire Sicha reading Details -- yes, Details.
: Note also that Denton is finally getting ready to take the wraps off of his high-class porn blog, Fleshbot.
October 27, 2003
Fair & awarded
: FoxNews founder Roger Ailes is named TV Journalist of the Year by Broadcasting & Cable. And they interview him. Choice quotes (and getaloada the Howell Raines story): Q: What do you think Fox News' contributions and innovations have been?
A: We've proved that we get larger audiences to cable news than anybody in American history, for one thing. We cover a broader spectrum than most people. We say it's fair and balanced....
And we present broad views. We don't eliminate it. Bias has to do with the elimination of points of view, not presenting a point of view....
Q: Is the public not smart?
A: They may not be as informed. They're very smart, and they catch on quickly, and they can process different sources....
Q: So if Fox News is fair and balanced, then why do so many other people not believe it?
A: Because they're getting their ass beaten.
Q: It's not just CNN. It's not just competition.
A: Look, we're doing something that is forcing them—including the New York Times and the LA Times—to examine how their journalism's being presented....
Q: So you think the New York Times and the LA Times are comfortable being liberal?
A: Well, they've become advocacy journalism. You either do it, or you don't. And they do it. [Former New York Times Editor Howell] Raines clearly was driving an agenda. I called Howell. I forget the story. It was their Afghanistan coverage. There was some stuff ... that wasn't true. We had guys on the ground, and so I called him up and said, "Howell, You're going to get an award for fiction here." He said, "I'm hanging up." I said, "You don't seem to have a sense of humor, Howell." He said, "I don't have one about journalism." So then, later, when Jayson Blair happened, I sent a note and just said, "Maybe it's time to develop a sense of humor about journalism."
Vox.pop
: Gary Wolf is writing a story about the Dean campaign for Wired and along the way, he's blogging about it (a new and wise approach to reporting, by the way, for it will bring in new information and perspectives).
He just blogged a "retroactive manifesto" for the Dean campaign's online strategy -- that is, acting as if you were planning what has happened, what principles would guide you? He puts together a good list from David Weinberger to Steven Johnson to Joi Ito [hat tip to Joi for this]. He's now trying to figure out how to distill Clay Shirky into a paragraph.
And, Gary, don't forget Glenn Reynolds from Bloggercon: Online, you have to give up control to gain power.
How to make the world job in journalism the best job in journalism
: Dan Okrent has just been appointed to the worst job in journalism: public editor (that's the pronouncable, spellable, PC synonym for ombudsman) at the NY Times.
But I think I know how to turn it into the best job.
I know Dan from my days at Time Inc. and afterwards, when he headed up new media content. He's smart and opinionated; I like and respect him. But I'll just bet he'll rub the Timesies the wrong way, for he can be gruff and he has no newspaper experience (which would help if you're trying to figure out how a story gets messed up in such an organization). That will only make watching this more entertaining.
I thought this was the worst job in journalism: dealing on the one hand with too many Times-bashing natterers to count and on the other hand with Timesies, and being at the center of the gigantic circle-jerk that is journalism self-awareness.
But I see a new model for how to run the job in a memo -- not, unfortunately, a column -- that Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler wrote slashing Tina Brown's debut in the Post: Post ombudsman Michael Getler’s review was scathing. “This precious, egocentric piece was about the worst and most irrelevant thing I’ve read in my three years on the job,” he wrote in his weekly Friday afternoon memo.
At 11 AM Thursday Brown went online for a live chat about being Tina Brown. She mentioned her cable-TV show an even dozen times. The cable network and show will go unmentioned here, but the network does have an unwritten deal with the Post to share stories and information—and now, Tina.
About the online self-promotion, Getler said he was “embarassed for the paper and also for the Web site." : So imagine this: Okrent is supposed to be able to put columns in the New York Times "as often as he sees fit." And the Times editors have "waived any right to review Mr. Okrent's commentaries before they are published."
So Dan should make himself into the Times' own blogger. I don't mean he should start a blog. I mean he should take on blog attitude: skeptical, wry, pestering.
What would happen if he wrote a column making fun of a Maureen Dowd column? You'd hear cheers! What if he made fun of dog-demograpic stories on page one of the great paper? What if he fisked an editorial? And, just to keep you guessing, what if he turns around and praises the logic of a Paul Krugman column?
What if, in short, he became what he says he wants to be: the true Times Überreader?
Rather than writing stuffy, boring, balanced shoulda/coulda/woulda post mortems on newspaper boo-boos, instead do what the world does when it cares enough to read the Times: Argue about it, poke at it, make it the subject of conversation. That would bring the old gray lady new life -- and credibility.
It could make you a star, Dan.
: Oh, and one more bit of advice: Seriously, do read weblogs, Dan. You will find legitmate questions and criticisms more quickly than they can bubble up through the mail and the ranks. Blogs are your early warning system.
And then they were Friends
: Stern also reports this morning -- unbelievable but true -- that Jennifer Anniston and Brad Pitt are going to the Middle East to bring peace. Sure enough: Where presidents and prime ministers have failed, Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt and wife Jennifer Anniston hope their star power will work wonders in new roles as Middle East peace envoys.
Tinseltown to give a try, led by Brad Bitt (left) and his wife Jennifer Anniston.
They will team up with other actors such as Edward Norton, Jason Alexander and Danny DeVito on a private mission to help resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict.
'The past few years of conflict mean that yet another generation of Israelis and Palestinians will grow up in hatred,' said a statement from Pitt and Aniston. 'We cannot allow that to happen.' That's what the Middle East needs: a laughtrack.
And that's the wonderful thing about stars: They have no idea how stupid they are and they have no one to tell them.
: Meanwhile, did you see that Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston's production company just bought the rights to the story of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl's murder? That's what the war on terrorism needs: glamorous victims.
Howard Stern says...
: Howard says the reaction of some New Yorkers he knows to the California fires is odd. Try to talk to them about the fires, try to get them to care, and they say, "9/11."
Yes, it's hard to beat even our tragedies.
October 26, 2003
Weblog internationalism: blog bridges, blog mobs
: One of the most exciting aspects of weblogging for me is the international nature of it.
Webloggers link to news from sources around the world with different viewpoints (see Steven Johnson's study of Technorati headlines).
And webloggers manage to make connections across any borders -- national, ideological, religious, linguistic -- here. See Martin Roell and Ton Zijlstra on making such connections via this post.
The most gratifying moments I've had with this weblog have been such moments on blog bridges. Early on, I tried to make use of my bad German to read German blogs; I linked to them (see my blogroll); they linked to me; conversations and, I hope, friendships followed. And now, when I link to something, I find it popping up in German blogs quickly either because of me or another blog bridge on either side. I have been captivated by the story of Iranian bloggers carrying on a true revolution (rather than our couch revolution) and I'm delighted to have met many of them online. Most recently, I'm gratified to see a new Iraqi blogger, Zeyad, giving us a fresh perspective from Baghad at HealingIraq. See other links in this post below and various posts inbetween.
That is all good: new communication, new connections, new understanding, new information, new relationships, new power.
That is all something that could not happen before blogs.
: But, of course, there is a bad side, too. That's no surprise. This weekend, I linked to various European blogs that had critical things to say about anti-Americanism and this began to bring out Europe bashing to match the America bashing.
What's most curious about this is that online, Americans and Iranians and Iraqis are getting along better than Americans and French and Germans. Perhaps we're too close, too familiar. Perhaps there are other, more complex reasons. Whatever.
My point -- a quite simplistic one, in the end -- is that we need to guard against bashing ... or the assumption that criticism is the same as bashing.
I link to some German sites that are critical of anti-Americanism from Ted Honderich or Michael Moore, below, and people come on and engage in inane German bashing. That doesn't do anybody any good and certainly doesn't advance the discussion. On the other hand, when I criticize Jacques Chirac for dumping on us, I'm accused of bashing. That, too, doesn't advance the discussion.
The great potential of this medium is to create connections that could not exist before. Let's not disconnect.
Here ends my Mister Rogers moment.
 Well, it's one way to keep the little nippers in line
: Drove by this sign in the 'burbs, chortled, then suddenly realized that I now have my handy-dandy phone cam and so I did a Uie, pulled up, snapped the shot, and here it is. And who says the quality of journalism will not improve...
War zones
: Blogger Chris Albritton raised money from his readers to send him to report from Iraq.
Josh Marshall is raising money from his readers to send himself to report from a far more treacherous place: the New Hampshire primary. I want to dedicate this trip entirely to blog coverage so I want to fund it with reader support, reader subscriptions. That’ll be part of the experiment too --- whether this kind of independent journalism can come up with the resources to fund high-quality on-the-ground play-by-play reporting. Click here to pay. Whether or not you pay, the content will be available to all.
I'd say this beats an NPR pledge week.
Tall people unite!
: Howard Sherman reports on the invention of a life-saving device: The Knee Defender, a small bit of rubber that will prevent the rude oaf in front of you on an airplane from leaning her/his seat back and banging our knees, threatening our laptops, spilling our drinks, and inducing claustrophia. I'll take one!
Michael Moore is to Jerry Lewis as...
: Deutsche Welle reports that Michael Moore is bigger in Germany than he is in the U.S.: His diatribe against U.S. President George Bush Stupid White Men sold nearly 1.1 million copies in German – comprising an astonishing one-third of the book’s total global sales. Compare that with the 630,000 copies he sold in the United States, with its far larger population and you can begin to see why industry magazine Publisher’s Weekly compared his popularity here to that of comedian Jerry Lewis in France. Too perfect.
Why? So where’s the attraction? And how does Germans’ appreciation for Moore differ from that of Americans?
"His film and books feed negative stereotypes in Germany and the traditional belief by many here that the country is uncultured, money grubbing, materialistic, superficial and that they run around with a gun in their hands," said Tom Clark, an assistant professor of history at the University of Kassel.
However, Clark noted, that much of the irony and self-reflection appreciated by American readers is lost in the transatlantic crossing. "Moore works in a different context in Germany than in the States," Clark said. Though his books are seen as a sort of "rambunctious comedy," they also lose much of the nuance caught by Americans.
Those differences in perception are also apparent in the book’s German marketing. In the United States Moore’s book is sold under the title "Stupid White Men ... and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Union." In Germany, loosely translated, it’s called "Stupid White Men – Settling the Score with America under Bush."
The myth of the anti-war Democrats
: David Broder bursts the bubble of those who think there is a mass movement among Americans and particularly Democrats against the war: Since Dean has emphasized his early opposition to the war in Iraq as his calling card in the race, it is easy to assume that his antiwar stand and his criticism of Lieberman, Gephardt, Kerry and Edwards for supporting the resolution authorizing the use of force must account for his strong showing -- especially in New Hampshire.
Wrong. When the Democracy Corps team asked whether voters in those three states wanted a Democratic nominee "who opposed the Iraq war from the beginning" or one "who supported military action against Saddam Hussein but was critical of Bush for failing to win international support for the war," voters in all three states chose the second alternative. Dean's position was preferred by only 35 percent of the likely voters in the New Hampshire Democratic primary -- fewer than supported it in Iowa or South Carolina -- while 58 percent chose the alternative....
The fact that Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire are not reflexively opposed to our involvement in Iraq is underlined by the poll finding that, by a margin of 54 percent to 38 percent, they favor a nominee who "reluctantly supports" Bush's $87 billion aid request over one who opposes it -- while Iowa and South Carolina voters lean slightly the other way.
If it's not his early antiwar stand that is powering Dean, what explains his lead in the Jan. 27 primary? The Democracy Corps poll strongly suggests it is the fact that the New Hampshire primary electorate -- including many of those independents -- is overwhelmingly liberal on social issues on which Dean has identified himself....
In short, it is cultural forces -- far more than anything else -- that explain Dean's appeal in New Hampshire, forces that may tug the other way when the race moves to more typical battleground states. We, the people, see things in grays. We, the people, are smarter than we're portrayed to be. This is a complex issue and we, the people, know it. We're being painted in black-and-white but it's a false picture.
October 25, 2003
The editorial we
: Back on July 9 and July 10, I said that the audience's news judgment -- as reflected in Technorati and Blogdex -- does not match the news judgment of big news organizations and that's a problem for the big guys. I suggested that someone study the differences: It would be interesting for an academic out there to chart the top stories on, say, Blogdex vs. the top stories on Google News (which, though automated, tracks professional news organs). I say you'd then be tracking the interests of the audience (with bloggers as an imperfect proxy that is improving as the universe grows) vs. the interests of the pros. Well, Steven Johnson did just that for his Discover Magazine column, comparing GoogleNews headlines -- which rise by their use in big media -- with Technorati headlines -- which rise with their links from bloggers: So how do the Technorati headlines compare with the old-fashioned ones? On major news events—particularly those involving war, terror, political scandals, and celebrity deaths—the two approaches produce similar results. The week of my experiment was dominated by a major arrest in the war on terror: The New York Times and CNN both gave top billing to news of the arrest, and sure enough, the Technorati Breaking News list featured several prominent links to the story as well. One difference is that the Technorati links pointed to a more international range of perspectives (though usually in English). The list was as likely to point to the BBC as to CNN....
More significant differences show up at the margins. Technorati places far more emphasis than traditional news outlets on opinion articles because bloggers seem just as likely to link to a firebrand op-ed essay as to a sober wire-service report. Jockeying for the top spot during my survey were a Europhobic diatribe from the New York Post, an almost mirror-image anti-American polemic from Britain’s Guardian, and a opinion piece on gay marriage and heterosexual divorce from the National Review. On any given day, hundreds of opinion articles are published by traditional news outlets online. Technorati lets you see something that was up to now practically invisible: which opinions are creating a buzz. You can think of it as the online version of Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park—not only can you hear the soapbox speakers, you can also tell which ones have attracted the largest crowds....
No, Technorati’s Breaking News isn’t a replacement for the traditional front pages or nightly news broadcasts. But neither does it create the narrowing perspective of the Daily Me. It’s more like an ongoing exchange between the top-down approach of traditional journalism and the bottom-up approach of the Web: Professional writers and editors generate the stories, and the Web’s vast audience decides which ones deserve our attention. And this approach may well result in the best of all possible journalistic worlds.
Europundits
: I had lost track of Europundits, a fine group blog from guess-where, and reading it today I came across some amazing recent posts.
: First, Nelson Ascher writes that one problem with the middle east conflict is branding: I know that what I'm going to say is rather simplistic. But, sometimes, really complex things have simple roots.
Why has the Arab PR been working so much better than the Jewish one?
Maybe it's a question of brands....
When Jews were known as Jews, they were despised. Then they became Israelis and they were backed, even admired. Now they are hated as Zionists and are beginning to be called Jews again.
While the Arabs were known as Arabs there wasn't much sympathy for them. When they managed to make themselves be called Palestinians, they became a small, oppressed people with whose tragic situation it was almost impossible not to empathize.
The interesting point is that this change of brands happened simultaneously, basically after the 1967 victory. The Israelis became Zionists, while the Arabs metamorphosed into Palestinians. The Arab-Israeli conflict was transformed into the oppression and genocide of poor Palestinians by cruel Zionists. Read the rest.
: And then there's this post that tears France a new you-know-what and concludes: Over the past year, there has been a tendency for Americans to take the European backlash personally. This is myopic. Together with Arabs, Africans and our neighbors in North and South America, we Americans are the bastards of Europe’s colonial hubris. Rather than trying to listen harder to the ancestors of those Europeans who mangled the globe in their efforts to dominate it, the American administration should spend more time reaching out to the developing world. An American president who is worthy of that title would have joined the developing world at Cancun and left the European Union alone with their tariffs that devastate today those nations that the EU’s member countries pillaged in the past. : It's European blog day at Buzzmachine....
I also just rediscovered Cum Grano Salis, a German blog that is not afraid to look anti-Americanism in the eye in an amazing post that argues that Old Europe's problem with America is really an identity problem with itself. Too rich to summarize; go read it.
Brainwashing German children
: Davids Medienkritik, the German/English blog quoted a few times today, has this shocking report on a children's news program that is riddled with anti-American propaganda. For example, there's this from one program: The prisoners should tell as much as they can about Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. But since most of them won't do it voluntarily, they are mistreated, beaten and even tortured. And: they have no chance to consult with an attorney. Human rights organizations like Amnesty International find it terrible that the US government decides on its own when human rights should be upheld and when not. Says the weblog: In Germany the Nazis and most recently the SED (former ruling Communist party in East Germany) thought it right to use media manipulation of children for the purpose of indoctrinating them with propaganda. The WDR places itself, with its one-sided, biased and manipulative reporting on its children's radio program in the same ugly tradition.
Blogroll
: My blogroll was hanging over me like weekend homework, weekend after weekend.
So I just dug into it. I'm sure I messed up things: left people off, left dead blogs on, messed up addresses. But I hit my wall. So it's up.
I put many of the blogs that I had not listed before under "new," even though many of them are not new. I should have done that with all of them but that didn't occur to me until too late; others are listed here, there, and everywhere.
Next target: My butt-ugly colors....
Then a nose job....
Then Grecian Formula....
: I'm trying white as a background first. OK?
: And I'm giving the ad a rest for a week or so. Don't want to let the message go stale. But it will return.
: Everybody hated my old background color. So I go to white. Now the first comment is a complaint about that. Leave me some colors (in code) in the comments and I'll try them out. I am using an old Blogger template (shame on old me) and so it's not as easy as just changing my CSS. So be gentle with me.
: Movable Type question: I would like to create a new, parallel template that can be read on mobile phones, such as my new Treo 600, at an easy address, such as go.buzzmachine.com. All I want is the center content well with no right rail to make the download lighter. How do I create a new template that runs in parallel with my main index template?
A 'right to terrorism'
: The abhorrent Ted Honderich strikes again, arguing that the Palestinians have a right to terrorism -- and that a terrorist human bomb who kills an Israeli child is exercising that right. He said this in a lecture at the University of Leipzig. David Kaspar's new blog reports on it. Find Honderich's full text here.
On the question of the morality of a Palestinian human bomb killing an Israel child, Honderich says this: ... the Palestine suicide bomber does have a moral right to her act of terrorism, and ... the Israeli in the helicopter has no moral right to his act of state-terrorism. To clarify any such assertion of a moral right, this one comes to this: the Palestinian suicide-bomber was morally permitted if not obliged to do what she did, which very judgement has the support of a fundamental and accepted moral principle. He then launches into an odd lecture about the moral superiority of Germany after the Holocaust: The Germans are now rightly known for taking on themselves the guilt of their fathers. They have a kind of moral superiority not shared by all of the rest of us. The Holocaust was not the first or last genocide in history. Other perpetrators have not been so ready to accept and to deal with guilt. It is for this reason of moral superiority that Germans now have a special obligation to speak against a rape. They will be heard a little more than other nations. There is a reason for their being heard, which is their standing. This moral position is also the reason of their silence until now. They can do more than the rest of us to awaken America from its ignorant trance.
Gotcha
: I thought Glenn Reynolds was off the air for an entire day because he was busy dashing the career hopes of would-be law professors. Instead, this was what was keeping him busy.
A new soldier blog
: Reader Dianna Sebben spots this in the new comments on Zeyad's HealingIraq blog: A U.S. soldier blogging from Baghdad. He writes about the improved security in Baghdad; Zeyad also writes about the success of the Iraqi Police.
More bedtime reading
: Through a bad link at Die Zeit, I found myself not at a harmless ancient mapping center but instead at the Rand's Individual Preparedness and Response to Chemical, Radiological, Nuclear, and Biological Terrorist Attacks, which runs through detailed scenarios of various "catastrophic terrorist attacks: outdoor chemical release, indoor chemical release, dirty bomb, nuclear detonation, anthrax release, and smallpox release." I thought I was going to have a quiet Saturday picking applies. I'll be building a bunker instead.
Bedtime reading in translation
: This has turned into a gangly post about language and connections in weblogs. It started with the first link, below, but then I kept adding other things I found. The result is rather disjointed post about international connections. It's an important topic -- internatinalization is one of the great contributions of weblogs -- and so I'm sorry I'm doing it a disservice with this disjointed post but I'm rushed this morning, so click away below and I'll come back to the topic later...
: Just found a site packed with good reading: World Without Borders, the online magazine for international literature. I got to read one of my favorite German-language authors, Wladimir Kaminer, in a story called Paris Lost, translated into English.
The site's raison d'etre: English-speaking culture in general and American culture in particular has long benefited from cross-pollination with other worlds and languages. Thus it is an especially dangerous imbalance when, today, 50% of all the books in translation now published worldwide are translated *from English,* but only 6% are translated *into* English. I just wish the creators -- from Bard College -- didn't turn into apologetic Americans: Globalization, we hope to say (not didactically, and not, we hope, naively, but in the richness of cultural information we present) need not be equivalent to Americanization. Nevermind that. There's still much to read here and it's good that so much is being translated into English. [via Die Zeit]
: Also see David Kaspar's new bilingual blog with English posts and German posts translated into English. [Thanks to Tanker Schreiber for the link.]
: Meanwhile, Martin Röll mixes languages on his blog, as Europeans can. He quotes me on big media and weblogs in English and replies auf Deutsch.
Martin also has a fascinating post about "connectors" making these international connections work. Here's the post auf Deutsch and a summary in English. He quotes Ton Zijlstra on the idea that connectors make connections work: So it's up to individuals to create a solution. To connect networks you need connectors, networkstraddlers. Through them knowledge and information can flow between two otherwise separated networks. It's not just about language. It's about simply making connections sometimes.
: One of the things that excites me most about blogs is their international nature and the new connections they enable. I've used my pathetic high-school German to read lots of wonderful German blogs and because I've linked to them, they've linked to me; I've quoted them and thus others have; thus connections are made. I don't speak Arabic or Farsi but because Iranian and Iraqi bloggers have been writing in English -- because they made the language connection -- I was able to make my own connection. I've linked to Hoder and Zeyad; others have linked to them; they have linked to us. Connections.
: See also Blogalization, for bloggers who post in multiple languages: Blogalization is an open community of bloggers who post in one or more languages about material discovered in one or more other languages: if I have languages A and B and you have languages B and C, we can share memes across all three, and the monoglot can transmit memes across language barriers. : Also: Heiko explains why he blogs in English.
Recount!
: I've been knocking on the door to the Technorati Top 100 for sometime, but it's a moving target. I get more links; they all get more links. But I saw this week that I had more than the bottom one or two (I can knock Gizmodo for a loop). So Technorati finally put out its latest Top 100 list and I'm not there. I demand a recount! Some districts used electronic voting matchines and they were hacked, I'm sure!
October 24, 2003
Bias
: Read Rosen. Is media bias a red herring? Is all this talk about bias in media about bias that isn't my bias? Is all this talk about bias in media really about bias against media? Is bias bad?
Media Darwins
: Many of us are trying to figure out and explain the evolution in media that we're witnessing -- and that we're participating in. We want to know what it means about media and about us.
See the latest exchange between Jay Rosen and Doc Searls on cold media (dry, institutional anchors and attempts at objectivity) vs. hot media (more bluster and bombast trying to change our opinions) vs. blogging (something in the middle: we engage in media and we get to change our minds ourselves). It's a smart, telling, and true analysis.
But I still want to pull the stick back and look at this from a higher altitude (where the oxygen is lower -- so, be warned, it just may make me stupider). And here's what I think:
Media is getting personal
: Perhaps it's as simple as that. Media was institutional. Now it is personal.
By personalizing media, I don't mean customizing it (My Yahoo, Your Yahoo, All God's Children Got Yahoos).
I mean humanizing it, taking on the personalities of people, not of institutions. Consider:
: The success of FoxNews can be attributed to the rise of the personalities and opinions of its anchors. See my lengthy blatherings on this; see Rosen's cogent view of it; see Bill O'Reilly's own take, too.
: People magazine personlized all news, for now every story has a People angle. I was at the magazine at this tipping point. Once was, a big TV show on the cover yielded big sales. That ended with the remote control and its revolution of choice. The institution -- the show -- no longer mattered. Now what sold was the event in the star's life. It was personal. And soon, it wasn't just entertainment but news of any sort that got that treatment in People and everywhere. News was personal.
: I was also at People during the VCR revolution and I remember watching the son of my friend Peter Travers (the man you can blame for making me a TV critic), watching himself on video. For me, at my age, being on TV was a big deal. For young Alex Travers, being on TV was just part of growing up; everybody does it. Media became personal.
: The latest trend that ate TV, reality shows, is all about bringing people just like us -- the unfamous -- onto TV and making them famous, making us think that that could be us up there. They make fame personal.
: When Steve Outing asked me why Koz -- an effort to bring the Internet to local communities -- didn't work and why I think our attempt at using blogs to bring hyperlocal content online will work, I stopped and thought about it -- a rare moment -- and answered: "Personality." Koz (and we) had tried to bring the local institutions -- schools, congregations, teams -- online. But institutions have no heart. People will bring their communities online. It's personal.
: And weblogs, of course, make media personal to the extreme: We put our own personalities and opinions out there for the world to see. We mix up what we know with what we think and whom we like and who we are.
We become media....
We put the me in media
: (Sorry. I warned you that the oxygen was thin up here.)
I think this happened for a lot of reasons:
First, it could. We got choice with our remote controls and more cable channels and VCRs and the Internet; we could abandon big institutions for the things that we, personally, liked more. In a sense, weblogs are only the extreme extension of that trend: We don't choose from among 500 channels. We become our own channels.
Second, the institutions bored us. Fox is more fun that CNN. Simple as that.
Third, ask Dr. Freud: We all have egos and given a chance, they will emerge.
: Can this trend go too far? Of course. All trends do. If all news becomes personal and opininated, it will be inefficient to get an answer to a simple current question: Enough with the commentary, just tell me: What's the score?
But this trend will not go away, for whenever we the people get the power to choose what we want, it sticks. Whenever people get a taste of fame and attention, they don't want to give it up.
Media is personal for good.
: UPDATE: Read the comments on this post; some wonderful contributions.
: UPDATE: I was remiss in not linking to the "me in media" tagline at Corante's Amateur Hour because I couldn't remember where I'd seen it. Done.
Think local...
: Hyperlocal weblogging reaches Germany: The Backnang blog.
American food imperialism
: In Bulgaria.
Comments
: Heiko Hebig reports a new movement to create a cross-blog, open standard for comments [the link's in German]: Nico Lumma initiated a discussion among German weblog hosts to unite under an Open Blog Comment Alliance. The goal is to design and operate a central service (in many ways similar to MS Passport) to allow single sign-on comment posting across the blogosphere; for convenience, digital identity control, comment tracking across multiple sites, follow-up tracking, spam control, etc. Hopefully the 20sixs and twodays will join the effort. Through an open API the service should be able to communicate with MovableType, Radio, and any other weblog system. Change for the better. : By the way, Zeyad wants to add comments to his HealingIraq blog (brave fellow). If you're an expert on how to do this with Blogger and Blogspot, please send him an email.
Easterbrook redux
: A super Charles Krauthammer column today on l'affaire Easterbrook. He says, as many of us have -- and as Easterbrook has, too -- that he expressed himself stupidly and that was wrong. But... What is going on here? Jews are being attacked in Germany. Synagogues are being torched in France. Around the world, Jews -- such as Daniel Pearl -- are hunted and killed as Jews. The prime minister of Malaysia tells an Islamic summit that "1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. . . . We are up against a people who think . . . they have now gained control of the most powerful countries. . . . We cannot fight them through brawn alone" -- and gets a standing ovation from the heads of state of 57 countries. And amid all this, the Anti-Defamation League feels the need to wax indignant over a few lines on a Web log? ...
Nonetheless, the idea of destroying someone's reputation and career over a single slip of this type is not just ridiculous, but vindictive.
And hugely beside the point. The world is experiencing the worst resurgence of anti-Semitism in 50 years. Its main objective is the demonization and delegitimization of Israel, to the point that the idea of eradicating, indeed obliterating, the world's only Jewish state becomes respectable, indeed laudable. The psychological grounds for the final solution are being prepared.
That's anti-Semitism.
Easterbrook has apologized. Leave him alone. : UPDATE: See Steven I Weiss' cover story in Jewsweek: "Gregg Easterbrook's not an anti-Semite...
...and the media just can't figure out why. The anatomy of a blog controversy."
Web terrorism
: Michele has more on the web terrorism attack that took down many weblogs in recent days, including a link to a translation of an Arabic-language site praising the attacks. She is well and truly freaked to find a link to her site there.
: And here's a Newsday story with much more on the attacks. Good on them for covering the story.
: And Hoder tells the web terrorists what for.
: And by the way, speaking of Hoder, he has added English summaries to his Persian blog.
 Blogoons
: You all know the lower-case hugh macleod in the comments and I hope you know his wonderful cartoons on the backs of business cards. He's selling prints of them online again and that's good news. I'm the proud owner of an original macleod. You should be, too.
October 23, 2003
We won't have to explain "blog" anymore when...
: When they make Page One of the New York Times. Check.
: When a character on a sitcom has one. Waiting.
: When somebody on a reality show has one. Surely.
: When a criminal on Law & Order confesses on one. Naw.
: When a pulp fiction criminal confesses on one. Surely.
: When a country singer sings about one. Inevitable.
: When The Daily Show mentions blogs. Check.
: When Jay Leno makes a joke about blogs. Waiting.
: When a major TV pundit responds to one on the air. Soon.
: When a major TV pundit gets a blog. Maybe.
: When major media, having ignored them, suddenly decides they're yesterday's news. Check.
: When a newsmagazine has a cover billing on them. Just wait.
: When VCs try to make money off them. Check.
: When Microsoft tries to make money off them. Hmmmm.
: When big brands like Absolut advertise on them. Check.
: When you hear your parents use the word in a sentence without gulping. Check.
Getting there.
Horst Obst adds:
:When Al-Qaeda attacks some of them. Check!
The solution to commuting woes
: I have the solution to commuting woes, crowded highways, underfunded trains and busses, all in one little word:
Wi-fi.
Commuter rails in Canada and northern California are testing wi-fi on commuter trains.
I drive to work now but that'd make me leave my car behind. I'd even pay more for the privilege of using the service. I could work, surf, chat, whatever instead of wasting time twiddling thumbs or staring off into space. I wouldn't even get so upset during the delays.
NJ Transit: Take a lesson from Starbucks and McDonalds and Canada's rails. If you offered wi-fi connectivity, I'd bet that more people would take the trains -- and pay more.
Salam's unfair post
: Salam Pax has a most unfair and misleading post regarding new fellow Iraqi blogger Zeyad. Salam says this: Hmm.... now it is me who linked to this weblog, and I am sure everyone has the right to say what they think, but this is kind of strange. I would rather have President Bremer (Allah preserve him) ruling us than any of them. pfui...filthy words wash your moth with soap young man. Now read Zeyad in the full context, a post I quoted the other day. He's not saying for a second that he wants Bremer. He's saying he would prefer Bremer to some of the other dangerous nuts vying for power, dangerous nuts who would probably be bad news for Salam, too. Zeyad's words, in context: I truly hope that living under 50 years of tyranny hasn't turned us all into potential tyrants. I worry constantly when I see some of the newly appointed Iraqi officials and controversial politico-religious figures just too eager to rule and assume power in the country. They are desperately trying to push it and speed up things for themselves. I see Saddam's face under the masks they're wearing. They are tyrants in disguise. I would rather have President Bremer (Allah preserve him) ruling us than any of them. For same, Salam, for shame.
For someone who was constantly doubted and misinterpreted online and in print, a person would think that you'd take more care in the quoting of a fellow Iraqi, a fellow weblogger.
What's the matter: Jealous about the new kid in town? [via Tomi in my comments]
: There's a picture of Salam in a Stern interview but he still hides his identity because he says he feels safer that way.
Well, taking that quote above out of context isn't any way to aid your fellow blogger's safety in Iraq is it, Salam?
: UPDATE: See Zeyad's response -- and lesson in Iraqi irony -- in the comments.
Hey, Tina, where's your blog?
: A friend sends this wonderful excerpt from Tina Brown's Washington Post chat: Brooklyn, N.Y.: What do you think about the blog phenomenon? Are there any bloggers out there that you find to be both informative and entertaining? Should magazines recruit bloggers for staff positions? (As was the case with Elizabeth Spiers.)
Tina Brown: I love the blog.s Think they are really channging the collective voice of journalism. People are sick of mediated coverage. They like the noholds barred appraoch....
New York, N.Y.: Hi Tina: Congratulations and best of luck with the new endeavours. Q: In a recent interview President Bush said something like he doesn't read newspapers or watch TV news because he has people do that and report to him. Do you think it's a little dangerous to have the man in charge having his news put through the only-good-news-for-the-president filter?
Tina Brown: Maybe he spends his day reading bloggs Gawker has more excerpts here.
Yo, Joi
: Can you pick up one? Anil wants it. Bad.
My books
: Ben Hammersley announces that Amazon has full-text search of all its books up (just type anything into the search box and you get links to pages in the books).
So, of course, I did the egotistical thing: I looked up my name.
I find myself mentioned in more than a dozen books. (Forget the first one about the other Jeff Jarvis, famed musician. I, of course, am the Jeff Jarvis.)
My favorite:
I'm in The Book of Poisonous Quotations with this re Andy Rooney: "He's a twit. He wastes good airwaves and electrons. He's just plain unbearable."
I'm quoted defending the quality of TV and the taste of the audience watching it here. The birth of a populist ranter.
I defended David Letterman's infamous Oprah-Uma Oscar performance here.
And I smashed Oprah here.
Damn, that was fun.
Using the BBC's community tools to a good end
: So, my British cousins, why not have some fun and go into the BBC's new community organizing tool and organize a campaign to support the coalition action in Iraq and the Iraqi people. Support financial aid. Get a meeting together. See whether the Beeb pays attention.
Mogeeking
: Sometimes, such small things can make me happy.
I didn't post last night because I was mogeeking. I got my Treo 600 to act as a modem for my laptop (thanks to Kevin Werbach's recommendation of PDApal). And so now I can blog from anywhere. I will go into a booth, change into my costume, and emerge: SUPERBLOGGER! He blathers anywhere! He types before he talks! He types when he walks! He's unwired! He's SUPERBLOGGER!
October 22, 2003
Or since 2001, actually
: Glenn's new slogan: Attacked by al Qaeda since 2003.
The report from Iraq
: Zeyad continues to give us wonderful reporting as a citizen-journalist in Baghdad. A few excerpts today. On bombing scares: The latest fashion of Jihad in Baghdad today is fake bombs and false alarms. I returned from work yesterday to find our street blocked on both ends by Iraqi police and Americans.
Oh no, not again, I thought. They didn't allow the taxi to pass, so I got out and asked some bystanders what was going on. They said a team was trying to dismantle a bomb placed on the road about 3 blocks away. Uh oh.
Our street was literally swarming with soldiers and police. I stood by expecting an explosion any second and ogling a beautiful blonde thinking how sexy she looked in that military outfit.... The bomb was a dud. And there's this: I heard some very distressful news today. Someone has been writing graffiti all over Baghdad threatening to kill children who accept the new schoolbags that are to be gifted to them by UNESCO for the new school season. Also warning that any hand waving to the infidel Americans will be cut. He also reports on continuing problems with electricity.
Cast the movie now
: The most entertaining reading I've had in ages is David Gest's suit against alleged hubby-basher Liza Minelli at The Smoking Gun. Enjoy!
Wow
: I'm impressed. Gawker got mentioned on Page One of the NY Times today.
Soon, we won't even need to explain what a weblog is.
Noted
: More than half of Americans went on the Internet last month.
The all-in-one, super-duper, deluxe everything citizens' reporting machine
: If you were going to invent the ideal gadget for reporters -- or better yet, citizen-reporters and witness-reporters -- to carry around, what would it be?
I was lucky enough to go attend Clay Shirky's NYU ITP class this week to bring a real-world (read: old-fart) perspective to the students' inspiring social-software projects. I was carrying (read: flaunting) my new Treo 600 phone/palm/camera/web device and so Mark Argo, a student, and I started talking. He said he's been thinking about the perfect moblogging device. I liked that perspective; that's why I also like talking to students so much. I said if he invented that, it would be the perfect reporting device. And I so started thinking about what that would require:
1. Capture. It needs to grab and store photos, video, and audio.
2. Selection. You need to be able to easily edit -- that is, select -- the key chunks of those media bits.
3. Comment. You need to be able to write (or speak) your comment to wrap this.
4. Connect. You need to have a resource that lets you search and find out more about the topic you're reporting or commenting on.
5. Publish. You need to be able to get it online with a click.
That is the all-in-one, super-duper, deluxe everything reporting machine.
We're not too far away from that. My Treo is still awkward but it lets me take a picture, comment on it, connect to the Web, and post it.
 : To prove that, earlier that same day, I happened upon a scene: A New York parking cop giving a ticket to a U.S. Postal Service truck. It struck me as rather dumb: One arm of our government tickets another arm of our goverment to get our money and pay for a lot of bureacrats in the process. It wasn't worth bringing my camera out of my bag but then I remembered: I have my super-duper camera-phone. And it has the further advantage of being quite unobtrusive; the ticket lady wouldn't even notice me taking the picture.
As with anything new, this will, of course, cause nervousness and efforts to control it. We've all heard about gyms banning camera phones. And USA Today reports that attendees at a Britney Spears/Rolling Stone party had to hand in their cell phones at the door.
Steve Outing predicts that there will be a backlash against efforts to take away our cameras.
Right. In the day when we're all reporters and we all carry our all-in-one, super-duper, deluxe everything reporting machines, we'll demand the right to witness what we witness and tell the world about it. For we'll have all the tools we need to do that -- not only our machines but also our weblogs.
We'll be capturing scenes of politicians, police, celebrities, and fellow citizens doing or saying bad or stupid things everywhere. (Why isn't the Gawker Stalker photo-ready, already?)
And friends will be saying to friends -- just as bloggers say to bloggers today -- "this is off the record."
But news will be everywhere and everywhere, there will be citizens with their all-in-one, super-duper, deluxe everything reporting machines ready to capture it and share it with the world.
Dull and useless
: At lunch with Jay Rosen the other day (aren't you jealous?), he and I agreed that the import of FoxNews and Bill O'Reilly is complicated. People who look at Fox and say it's just America right-turn signal are missing so much more.
Fox changed the very business of TV news (by getting rid of expensive produced pieces and the producers who produce them and by going to live discussion, which is not only cheaper but livelier).
Fox brought opinion to news and, via the ratings, we see that the audience embraces that because it's simply more compelling and, in some ways, it's more honest to reveal your perspective as you report the news. (The great irony is, of course, that Fox and O'Reilly deny their perspective when asked, but in every other way are in-your-face upfront about it; there's a touch of Kafka to this story).
And, Jay writes, Fox and Bill O'Reilly bring something new to the alleged art of anchoring: He brings forcefully to the surface and makes explicit what had been buried for so long in the journalist’s presentation of self: a political identity in the one who brings us the news— proudly so.
Proudly political, you say? Yeah, and it’s no insult. Whatever else may be said about him, O’Reilly is someone who speaks his mind, and takes positions. A guy who, as a commentator himself and questioner of others, stands up for certain values in American life that (he thinks) don’t get defended enough. O’Reilly is the anti-anchorman because he dispenses with the broadcast professional’s cool demeaner, something Jennings, Brokaw, Rather, Bernard Shaw, Jim Lehrer, Judy Woodruff and countless others have never done. I agree. As I thought about it, I saw that all their video forebears -- Cronkite, Huntley, Brinkley, and the BBC, too -- tried their very best to make themselves -- and, thus, news -- dull. That was their high journalistic and moral calling. TV was getting dissed by print; they needed to give TV respectablity; they did it with stentorian tone and a fake unpersonality. And, frankly, that strategy worked. TV got respect (well, some is better than none).
But it was ripe for the pricking. So along came O'Reilly, who did a tabloid show with pride and volume and then brought his same caffeine to cable news.
And the audience responds. They watch his shows. They buy his books. And it's not just because of what he says. It's how he says it. It's who he is, too.
When O'Reilly appeared on Howard Stern's show a few weeks ago (see it on E! tonight), he said that Stern paved the way for O'Reilly and others because he opened up the airwaves to saying what you think. It was right and good that he gave Stern credit.
After O'Reilly left, the Stern crew agreed that they liked O'Reilly but he also almost scared them. The guy is strung as tight as a mandolin. And just as in Private Parts, people said they watched Stern for hours to see what he'd say next, so do people watch O'Reilly to see what will make him snap. And he snaps because he cares. The previous generations of anchors didn't seem to care.
As Jay Rosen says, this is a new style of news: "resentment news." Howard Beale presaged it in Network. Bill O'Reilly lives it on FoxNews.
Beale and O'Reilly care. They get mad. And here's the important connection: So do we. We care. We get mad. We want to hear from people who are human, like us.
Some say this is the death of news. The same thinking said TV was the death of news.
I say it's just what news needs. It makes news compelling, worth changing the channel for, worth talking about the next day, worth arguing about, worth reading up on so you can argue. It's a good thing.
Dull news is not smart news. Useless news is not important news. There is nothing wrong with news being compelling and useful.
Go read Rosen's spot-on analysis of O'Reilly. It is a complicated story.
: Some of my earlier posts on the importance of O'Reilly and FoxNews here, here, and here.
: Update: See also this Bill O'Reilly column on anchors and opinions from last June: But the new era of instant information rendered Brinkley and many other broadcast veterans almost powerless. No longer is the American public a captive audience, and no longer will the folks settle for an expressionless recitation of the news. With the advent of the Internet and round-the-clock cable news, the audience quickly knows the basic facts of a story. But often, along with those facts come instant spin and contradiction. Informational fog develops, leaving busy Americans in need of context.
They want to know how the journalists they trust feel about things important to their lives. The news consumer is almost desperate for someone to define the truth.
Thus, the good old days when the Brinkleys and Cronkites could simply introduce stories in measured tones are coming to an end. The audience for dispassionate news is shrinking, and the demand for passionate reporting and analysis is on the rise.... Amen, brother Bill. I've been preaching that story for sometime. But O'Reilly says this is more than a response to the audience's desire, it's an obligation of a business dedicated to informing the public: Jennings, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw know a lot more than they're telling you. They understand the issues and know who the charlatans are. These three men should be commentators, not news readers. They have insights far beyond most Americans. For the good of the country, they should share them.
Two things hold them back. First, it is risky to do news analysis. You are bound to tick off some powerful people....
Second, the network suits would get nervous. Newspaper columnists are expected to offend people. TV types are not. They are basically diplomats, and some are even a calming influence. Can you imagine Jennings pointing his finger demanding that President Bush come clean about weapons of mass destruction? Can you picture Brokaw pounding his desk and chiding Sen. Hillary Clinton for writing a book full of propaganda? It is hard to imagine, but wouldn't you like to see it?
Just about anybody can be taught to read the news. Why are brilliant men like Jennings, Rather and Brokaw wasting their time chucking headlines at us? The country needs clarity and honest insights. : More... I've been thinking how I would review O'Reilly today, if I were still a TV critic for one of these.
I'm sure that I would have ended up writing two reviews. The first would not have been positive. His high-strung, angry tone grated me when my folks visited and put FoxNews on the TV (and pumped up the v | |