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BuzzMachine
by Jeff Jarvis
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December 31, 2003
'Goodbye my most beautiful year...'
: Mohammad at Omar's Iraqi blog has a magnificent post heralding the close of 2003: Good bye 2003, good bye my most beautiful year. I'll grieve your end and sing your legend as long as I live.
You made my greatest dream come true.
I know that the coming years will bring all the good to my country, simply because we have put our feet on the right path.
The will of the good have achieved victory, and that is enough for me to be optimistic, but those will not be as special as you were
2003; the year of freedom.
Before you I was mute, and here goes my tongue praying for the best,
Before you I was hand-cuffed, and here are my hands free to write,
Before you my mind was tied to one thought and here I find wide horizons and greater thoughts,
Before you I was isolated, and here I join the wide universe.
I will never forget you; you broke the chains for my people.... : Ays adds: The most important event in 2003 was the capture of SH, it was my dream and the dream of millions of Iraqis.
That's what I need: a blog Boswell
: I'm sorry, but the tone of Lessig News always grates me like a Paris Hilton interview. It's so damned odd to have somebody writing about you in third person on your own web space: In the latest issue of Wired, Paul Boutin calls for Professor Lessig’s appointment to the Supreme Court: “Is he a Democrat or a Republican? Who cares! Laws governing information flow are the new affirmative action, abortion, and gun control rolled into one.” I could take it in first person. In third person, it's just, well, obnoxious.
Our online compatriot jailed in Vietnam
: A journalist in Vietnam has been sentenced to seven years in prison for what he wrote online (Human Rights Watch letter here).
China, Iran, Vietnam -- the list of countries jailing people for what they write on the Internet is, tragically, growing.
More talk
: I'm thinking about starting a forum. What do you think?
Our future
: George Simpson, media PR man extraordinaire, predicts our fate for 2004 in Media Daily News: At 3:09 (EST) on June 14th, blogging comes to an abrupt end when the last person writes the last thing they can think of. The sun comes up as usual on June 15th. Jeff Jarvis asks his wife if a tree falling in the woods still makes a sound if no one hears it. [via a snickering Choire]
Michael Jackson and CBS
: If CBS News paid for a Michael Jackson interview, that is utterly reprehensible.
But I'm not sure the network did.
The New York Times story alleging the deal is clear in the headline -- "Michael Jackson's $1 Million Interview Deal," it says online -- but is far less clear in the story.
Says The Times: But Mr. Jackson's business associate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the "60 Minutes" interview was part of what was originally a $5 million deal to put on an entertainment special for CBS during a sweeps period and that CBS had already advanced the singer $1.5 million of that fee.
CBS postponed the special, which was incomplete, after the authorities issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Jackson on multiple counts of child molesting. But the Jackson associate said that in renewed negotiations, CBS agreed to pay another $1 million to the star to grant the interview so that the network could finally broadcast its entertainment special. It is now scheduled to be broadcast on Friday evening. The way I read that, they paid him for the entertainment special and didn't even pay him the full amount of the deal.
The only thing they have to contradict that is an unnamed Jackson associate (a dubious description if I've ever heard one!) arguing that "in essence they paid him" for the interview. The story then concedes that is is "unclear how much Mr. Jackson will ultimately earn from the programs."
But wait: You just said that he was to be paid $5 million for the entertainment special. He has been paid half of that amount. The special is now scheduled to air (a cynical act in and of itself).
All this is not to say that there are not dangerous and dubious connections being made between news and entertainment deals these days. The same network reportedly offered entertainment deals for Jessica Lynch that were tied to news interviews. That's paying for news. If the Jackson deal was tied to the interview, that, too, would be paying for news.
But so far as I can see, The Times doesn't have a smoking gun.
: UPDATE: Roger Friedman at FoxNews also takes The Times to task for basing the story on an anonymous source. And Friedman speculates that that source is a disgruntled former Jackson manager who now runs sex clubs.
: UPDATE: Felix Salmon dissects the Times piece, head-scratcher by head-scratcher.
Methinks this is turning into a case for the Public Editor!
Into the Ombuscave, Okrent. On with the Ombudscape! Fire up the Ombudsmobile!
Recreating reality
: Jupiter's David Card says online fascimile editions of newspapers is a bad idea.
List of list of lists
: Fimoculous, exhaustive as always, has gathered the list to end all lists of year-end lists.
You'll note that I'm not doing any lists. That's because I always hated them when I was paid to do them for papers and magazines.
The worst was compiling People's annual 25 Most Intriguing, a painful process of meetings and arguments and pap on paper. But it had its highpoints. There was the year I had to go along with a top editor of the magazine to translate Bill Gates for him. And there was the year they made a TV special out of the list, complete with Hollywood dancers coming on camera to sing and dance the names: "Lech [step step] Waaaaaalesa!" If I keep going, I'll end up making a list. So I'll stop now. I hate lists.
And I don't make predictions, either. Nor resolutions.
But I will make this prediction: Kottke won't keep this resolution.
Relief for Iran
: Pedram reports $225,000 raised so far for Iranian earthquake relief. Remember: Get those deductions in before midnight. Contribute now. I did.
The big guy's blog
: Hoder has said that Iran's vice president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, had a blog; I didn't know it had so much in English. Today here is his New Year's message: Would it come true that in the next year humans own reverence and so their spirit?
Would it come true that humans be free everywhere in the world including our country Iran, to be able to live however they want?...
Of course among all these bad news of the year 2003, sweet news parades nicely. That is Saddam’s fall down and his disastrous capture. One whose name was always being heard with the words of torture and slaughter for more than a quarter of a century.
The end of dictator is good news to all. The news of fall down of anyone who follows his way and want to have strength by killing the people of world will be good sweet news to all....
December 30, 2003
Social software
: Lots of smart folks are trying to figure out what the hell social software is, even as money pours into it. The problem is, the Internet is already the social software and rather than artificially imposing new social software on it -- rather than trying to turn us all into social spammers -- the real trick is freeze-drying what's already happening in the real world and virtual world instead of an artifical one: What do all my links signify about my network; what does my network have to say about the topics that matter to me; and perhaps, what connections can my connections make (but why would they?)? That's the trick; that's the mega McGuffin and everybody's chasing it.
Know-it-alls
: On Jessica's Well: Resolved: This House (OK, this Blog) believes that the collective knowledge of the blogosphere is greater than the collective knowledge of professional journalists regardless of the subject. Well, I could argue that today but that would be beside the point. Will we come to this tipping point (if we haven't already)? I'd go with the affirmative, wouldn't you? [via Michele]
At the start
: Michele recalls the start of the amazing Command Post.
She and the site aren't getting enough credit for their impact on news. This group blog did a phenomenal job finding, editing, selecting, and presenting the very latest and best news on the war. Nobody but nobody did that better. They showed the true potential of weblogs and editing by mob; they showed us the future of collaborative news. No, they didn't report. They edited the world and did a great job of it. Hats off.
Pissy on the pissy
: In an incredibly long-winded, humorless, overblown rant, one Arthur Silber attacks me for dubbing those who would see a dark lining to the silver cloud of Saddam's capture as the Coalition of the Pissy. I was simply paralyzed by this massive, apparently unanswerable intellectual onslaught. But then I remembered that the originator of that phrase has written for periodicals such as TV Guide, People and Entertainment Weekly. Lest you think that is merely a cheap shot: I mention those publications only because they reveal the kind of complex and nuanced intellectual pedigree from which slogans such as this latest one spring, as I will proceed to document in this post. I also realized something much more important: all those who adopted Coalition of the Pissy as their war whoop of condemnation against anyone declining to join their mindless dance of joy are nothing more than moral bullies and intellectual thugs. They are the enemies of mind, and of thought -- and they are the enemies of truth, justice and freedom in a very deep sense. They are the advance guard of the Truth Police. For them, history does not exist, nor does the past in any meaningful sense at all, nor does the future.
These barbarians live only in the moment, only in the now -- disconnected from everything that has become before, and from everything that is likely to flow in the future from our present actions. Thought, principles and ideas are alien to them, in the most profound sense imaginable. Oh, my. But you forgot: We eat puppies, too. [via Kevin Eugene Cole]
Sir Web
: Tim Berners-Lee deserves no less than knighthood.
Iran relations
: The Guardian says the U.S. is softening on Iran.
: But at the same time, the Telegraph says: President George W Bush was sent a public manifesto yesterday by Washington's hawks, demanding regime change in Syria and Iran and a Cuba-style military blockade of North Korea backed by planning for a pre-emptive strike on its nuclear sites.
The manifesto, presented as a "manual for victory" in the war on terror, also calls for Saudi Arabia and France to be treated not as allies but as rivals and possibly enemies. Good cop of the world, bad cop of the world.
Something is cooking
: TV news just showed a jam getting into Newark airport as every car goes through a security check. Something is up.
: UPDATES: Italy bans flights over Rome, for fear of attacks.
: Hamburg reportedly heads off a car-bomb attack.
: "Republican Rep. Christopher Shays, however, said people ought to avoid places like Times Square, calling it irresponsible for officials to make people think they don't need to take precautions.
'Secretary Ridge says just do what you normally do,' Shays said. 'If normally you go to Times Square, I wouldn't do what you normally do. I wouldn't go into places when you're packed and where if there was panic, a lot of injuries would take place.'"
What Iraqis think
: Zeyad translates and posts the results of a fascinating poll of Iraqis conducted all over the country by the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies. Go see all the results. Some highlights: 1)What was your reaction to Saddam Hussein's capture?
Overwhelming joy 59%
Shock and confusion 20%
Sadness 16%
None of my concern 5%...
3)Do you think that Saddam deserves a fair trial?
Yes 84%
No 16%
4)Do you prefer that Saddam be tried by:
An Iraqi court? 60%
An Iraqi court with International advisors? 15%
An International court of justice? 25%
5)What is the fair judgement you believe Saddam deserves?
Execution 56%
Imprisonment 25%
Clemency 19%
6)What do you think a speedy trial of Saddam would achieve?
It would prevent an internal schism or conflict 45%
It would ensure security and stability 30%
It would increase chaos 14%
It would help end the occupation 10%
Others 1%
7)How do you think Saddam's capture would affect the resistance?
Decrease resistance activities 53%
Increase resistance activities 27%
Cessation of resistance 20%...
9)Which is more important to you?
Providing security 54.9%
Providing fuel 35.8%
Saddam's capture 34.4%
Providing electricity 28.8%
Improving the economic situation 5.3%
10)Do you agree that those who suffered from the regime should be compensated?
Yes 12%
No 88% And then they were asked whether a series of Saddam's actions were crimes or were justified. They thought they all were crimes... except fighting Israel.
: MORE: Al-MuaJaha has a report from a visitor to Baghdad about life there: The restaurant business in Iraq is booming, wherever you go, restaurants are full. Some of them even charge by U.S. dollars. Prices are high for local people and reasonable for foreigners who have dollars. An average price for any Iraqi or western dish is between 6000 ID, which is equivalent to $3 U.S. and 10000 ID or $5 U.S. Quality is getting better after the war: drinks are served in a very limited way, mainly imported beers. When I asked about our good beer, which we used to produce, I was surprised to learn that even the beer factories were looted, in addition to all the other factories....
Foreign restaurants, like Indian Chinese French, Italian English and American restaurants, are not yet there....
It is not likely foreign investors will open restaurants in Iraq at the present time and it may takes a long time.
However, when I asked about the giant American fast-food chain, MacDonald’s, I was told that one Iraqi expatriate succeeded in striking a deal with MacDonald’s to open one restaurant in Baghdad. And some countries will no doubt accuse us of attacking the Iraqi people with mad cow disease.
: YET MORE [via Iraq Blog Count]...
: Hear Iraqi singer Macadi Al Nahhas here.
: See Iraqi art here.
: What is it with Websmart Iraqi dentists?
: What's most cool is that there seem to be some Arabic-language Iraqi blogs starting. This is good news. This is what happened in Iran. More to come!
: Blogalization reports: "Will terrorism end and the problem of security in Iraq be solved?" The latest poll from the daily Alef Ya in Baghdad shows a fair degree of optimism among 13,000 respondents about the prospects for security in Iraq.
39.4 percent foresee an end to the insurgency within one year, 47.2 percent within two years, while 13.4 percent do not see the problem going away.
Naked blogging
: Jason Calacanis reports that Pud of F'd company has a new venture: anonymous instant photo-phone moblogging. Send your photo to pics@mobog.com and it will appear within a minute; ready for audience comments. No name, nothing fancy, naked moblogging. Oh, and yes, some of the photos will be sure to be of naked bloggers.
Jargon
: Happened by the TV today when FoxNews was getting ready for Tommy Thompson's press conference on the ephedra ban. The screen said: "FoxNews Alert: Waiting for newser on ephedra ban..."
Newser.
I'm not sure whether that was an intentional use of news jargon; the line changed a minute later to "news conference."
But I think we'll see more sharing of new biz jargon; it's a way to make everyone feel like insiders.
Gotta love geeks
: Bloggers can't stop, even to eat.
Iran's political earthquake
: Hossein Derakhshan, Iran's premier blogger, explains how the earthquake in Bam reveals the fundamental separation of the people of Iran from their government: Nothing could ever show the real sense of diconnectivity and distrust between Iranian people and the Islamic regime, and its deeply dysfunctionality better than a devastating quake....
People inside and outside Iran are desperately trying to gather donations, but they don't want to give the money to the government....
However, the reason is pretty clear: When a government can run the whole country only by the oil and gas income, it doesn't have to answer its people's needs; it only thinks about its own needs. (In 2004, Iran will have $16 billion revenue from oil export, while it only depends on approximately 18% of citizen's taxes.)
So it's not important for the government that tens of thousands of lives are lost in road accidents every year, or millions are living in homes poorly resistible against any earthquake bigger than 5 Richter, or millions are open to different kinds of cancer because of the poisonously polluted air of Tehran, etc.
But they are pretty concerned about their own power and the threat from their own enemies; so they are always ready to spend a whole year of oil income, $16 billion, to achieve nuclear technology to use it as defensive weapons.
Why such a state ever bothers to care about the people's needs when it doesn't need their taxes and therefore their votes? Unless the power gets in the hands of real elected people, and the state is run by people's taxes, nothing will ever change; the state will have its own goals (to defend itself) and people have their own (to simply survive).
Media man
: FCC Chairman Michael Powell sits down with the San Jose Mercury News and out come some pearls of wisdom.
He illustrates the real shift in media and telecommunications: The most powerful paradigm shift is the fact that applications are not woven into the platforms. . . .
Now to be a phone company, you don't have to weave tightly the voice service into the infrastructure. You can ride it on top of the infrastructure. So if you're a Vonage, you own no infrastructure. You own no trucks. You roll to no one's house. They turn voice into a application and shoot it across one of these platforms. And, suddenly, you're in your business.
And that's why if you're the music industry, you're scared. And if you're the television studio, movie industry, you're scared. And if you're an incumbent infrastructure carrier, you'd better be scared. Because this application separation is the most important paradigm shift in the history of communications, and will change things forever. . . . I have no problem if a big and venerable company no longer exists tomorrow, as long as that value is transferred somewhere else in the economy. That idea of the application (or content) being separate from the platform is the architecture of the age.
It's what HTML, XML, and RSS are all about: content is separate from display and thus displayed anywhere.
Not to be tiresome and link everything to the local angle of blogs, but they, too, fit this model: Blogs ride on top of the infrastructure of others, without reporting structures or pressmen or trucks.
Politics now fit the model, too: Howard Dean used open-source tools to create a new, distributed campaign infrastruture apart from the DNC's infrastructure.
Hell, it's true even of terrorism: Bin Laden didn't need to run a country to reap change; he rides atop our infastructure.
On media ownership, Powell says: There is no question that there are an order of magnitude more media choices than at any time in our nation's history.
I don't know when this golden age was that everyone is benchmarking from. TV started by being dominated by three networks and three networks only, and it has done nothing but dilute since then. . . . Where was it more concentrated?
And we've had the invention of cable television, satellite television, the Internet. So you may disagree where to draw the line, but to argue for a line on the idea that the market is 10 times more concentrated than sometime . . . then you're just willing to have a debate not rooted in factual reality. Exactly. [via IWantMedia]
We're in USA Today
: Kathy Kiely writes a fine overview of blogs' impact on politics in USA Today today. Haven't picked up the paper yet, but it appears to be the Page 1 cover story. Kiely talked to lots and lots of people, bloggers and political beasts ("Veterans of the political scene admit they're having some trouble adjusting. 'When I first got up here, I thought blogging was an Irish dance,' says Tricia Enright, a longtime Capitol Hill press secretary...). It's a well-reported piece that tells people why they should pay attention.
: Tim Windsor, the blogless deputy GM of the Baltimore Sun's site, emails this reaction to the USA Today story: To your comment about "influencing influencers," I think that blogs are currently the Velvet Underground of publishing. As someone once noted (Lester Bangs perhaps?), the Velvets had a huge influence over the development of rock music because, while they didn't sell many records, everybody who bought one of their records went on to form a band. I like that.
: Tim now says the quote may be Brian Eno. See the comments.
: Here's the USA Today page 1.
: UPDATE: More fame (no fortune) as the BBC World Service Go Digital calls 2003 The Year of the Blog. Audio here. [via Blog Herald]
: UPDATE: Tom Mangan complains about the loneliness of blogging. I don't see it that way. I see it as a very social activity.
December 29, 2003
Instaconversation
: Wow: Glenn Reynolds started comments. Briefluy.
Online film awards
: The Online Film Critics Society released its annual film awards and got coverage in the Hollywood Reporter and thus Variety. I thought this must the be from BlogCritics but, no, it's another group. Lesson to bloggers: Form societies and give awards and get press.
The most dangerous President?
: Howard Dean is flailing like a loser. Here's his latest slap at the President: From Iraq to homeland security to public health, President Bush's "reckless" habit of placing "ideology over facts" has resulted in "the most dangerous administration in my lifetime," Democrat Howard Dean charged over the past two days. The "most dangerous administration" in his lifetime?
This guy is so over-the-top that he makes Democrats have to defend George Bush.
The "most dangerous"?
OK, let's gander at the Presidents since 1948, the year of Dean's birth:
: Harry Truman. Dropped the first atomic bombs. Overaw the Korean War. I'd call that dangerous.
: Dwight Eisenhower. Military man. Many find that dangerous on its face.
: John F. Kennedy. Damned near bluffed his way into a couple of nuclear confrontations. Dangerous.
: Lyndon Johnson. Well, my generation thought he was mighty dangerous. He was going to send us to our deaths in Vietnam.
: Richard Nixon. In my book, the most dangerous. Tried to bring down the presidency.
: Gerald Ford. Dangerous mainly to himself.
: Jimmy Carter. Not dangerous. Not terribly effective, but not dangerous (except to interest rates).
: Ronald Reagan. Well, I won't start a holy war on this one. Suffice it to say that some think he's a saint but others think he's the opposite -- and I'd bet those people would prefer Bush to Reagan (I would).
: George H.W. Bush. The Republican Carter: Not dangerous, not effective.
: Bill Clinton. Well, I liked him.
Go ahead: Play the Howard Dean Game with others and I'll bet that few if any over voting age who've washed in the last week who will come to the same conclusion Dean did. I'll bet that most will vote for Nixon.
It sounds as if Dean is trying to revive the '60s (and turn Bush into Nixon). But these aren't the '60s. What's uppermost on our minds today is not a war we declared -- no matter how much you wish that were the case, Howard -- but, instead, the war that was declared against us, by terrorists. This is more like World War II. If this were 1940 and a Republican called Franklin Roosevelt "dangerous," would you tolerate that or think it disloyal?
Criticize the President and the administration all you want, Dean, by all means, have at it.
But don't ever forget that the real danger is out there among the people who want to bomb our White House, not stay in it. If you can't remember that, Doc, then I won't feel safe with you in that White House. If you get elected, come November, I'll be paraphrasing you: "the capture of Saddam election of Howard has not made America safer."
: UPDATE: Josh Marshall says the Dean is also "playing the defection card and that crosses the line."
: UPDATE: Roger Simon says he's flailing because he's terrified of Hillary. Yup. I keep saying that: Hillary to the rescue.
Our real friend up north
: Kathy Shaidle, one of my very favorite webloggers at Relapsed Catholic, just became even more of a favorite thanks to the op-ed piece she wrote for the Dallas Morning News. Go read it (I set up an account: username: weblogs@weblogs.com, password: weblogs): ...Well, I am a recovering liberal, and Sept. 11 is my dry date.
That morning, my leftist life flashed before my eyes. I remembered to my shame all of those "Yankee, go homes" I had chanted as a Reagan-era peacenik. And rolling my eyes at the tacky teddy bear memorials at the Oklahoma City bombing and muttering, "You would think a building never had blown up before."
How sophisticated I was. And how sick....
I have taken to wearing a Stars and Stripes scarf. When asked about it, I explain that I use it to strangle old draft dodgers.
I really want to buy a gun (somehow) just so that I can refuse to register it.
I even have developed a taste for iced tea.
No, I am not entirely friendless. I have "met" new pals online: fellow Canucks equally outraged by the World Trade Center attacks and appalled by the matter-of-fact "they asked for it" attitude that permeates elite Canadian culture....
I believe I am on the right side of history now. Just on the wrong side of the border. Thank you, Kathy.
: Update: And here is part of the reason Kathy denies her Canadianess: a column by Toronto Star editorial page editor emeritus Haroon Siddiqui that shrieks: As the year of the war on Iraq draws to a close, the larger perspective that emerges is clear: George W. Bush, a small man in a big job, has dragged America into one of its darkest chapters.
Mean critics
: Rowan ("Mr. Bean") Atkinson checked himself into a shrink shop because of depression caused by bad reviews for Johnny English.
When I was a critic, I got the occasional mewling letter from a star (e.g., Alan Thicke) begging me to lay off. I preferred the angry ones (e.g., Bill Cosby). [via IT&W]
'Involvement journalism'
: AOL sends out a press release touting what it calls "involvement journalism." To complement the member's personalized news experience, AOL News offers multiple opportunities for members to join in the larger news debates and connect with other members through polls, message boards, chatrooms and AOL Journals (blogs), creating a more enhanced, shared experience....
"We're changing the way people consume and experience the news," said Lewis D'Vorkin, AOL's Editor-in-Chief for News and Sports. "AOL's unique format allows us to create a dynamic, interactive experience that our members trust and value. AOL News brings members the news they want in their preferred format and incorporates multiple voices through shared storytelling elements. As a result, not only do members get the news, but they can also see how others are reacting and gain different perspectives on world events. It's a strategy we call involvement journalism." Sounds good. If only they meant it and did it.
Go to the AOL news page and all you see from the audience is a tiny box with a tiny quote on, today, Michael Jackson, one user at a time. It's the man-on-the-streetization of the people, the worst of tokenism.
They talk involvement. They don't mean it.
But they could. AOL has all the tools that would allow its audience to become truly involved. They could use weblogs (aka journals) to edit the news from their perspective: See the world through the lense of someone like you. They could use bulletin boards to let their huge audience set the agenda for debate: Start a movement for health-care reform on AOL. They could use scientific polling of their diverse audience to see what America really says about issues: Who cares how it plays in Peoria; how does it play on AOL?
They could do all that if they meant it when they said "involvement journalism." But they don't. Too bad. [via Lost Remote]
Blogvertising
: Henry Copeland reports that Howard Dean's campaign is the latest institution smart enough to buy ads on blogs.
: Meanwhile, John Robb notes: I notice that Kerry has joined Clark by advertising on the Dean keyword in Google. No ads are attached to the Bush, Clark, or Kerry keyword. Hmm... Looks like a missed opportunity. This is even more interesting. Nothing is attached to issue keywords like Iraq, Medicare, or the Environment. This is a big mistake. Google performance marketing on issue keywords would be very effective in the 2004 presidential campaigns. Advertising on weblogs will be more targeted and effective. There's less inventory, but that will change...
Armed
: The Wall Street Journal asks: Should war reporters be armed?
Worst and best
: David (yawn) Shaw of the LA Times lists his worst media moments of 2003. What are your worst -- and best?
RSS on the go
: One of the best reasons to use RSS feeds is to read the news on the go, on a mobile device. On my Treo 600, I can do this with an application -- HandRSS -- or with a new and neat mobile-sized web site, MobileRSS [via Dave Winer]. They're both good starts.
I just wish I could import my list of sites, my OPML file, directly into either application instead of having to laboriously retype every address. Hint. Hint.
The conversation
: There are some wonderful comments continuing the discussion from the post below on the transformation of news, all sparked by a Tim Rutten column in the LA Times.
In the comments, Othello says: Let the high priests of the old media sniff at the blogosphere. I, for one, love our modern-day cyberspace townhall, and prefer "talking with" rather than "being talked (down) to" any day.... In spite of the dreck and noise (of which there is a lot), with not too much searching you can still find sites and people with whom you can have reasonable exhanges of ideas and discover common values ... even when they are halfway around the world, and are living in a country where your nation's armed forces have just fought a war.
Reliable communication between common people in which ideas are freely exchanged and debated is a terrific weapon against tyranny....
After all ... once people stop being told what to think, they're liable to think just about anything! That's less about the press than about the Web as an alternative but it's an interesting perspective.
Bill Herbert sides with Rutten on the value of an objective press: Despite Rutten's snootiness, I have to basically agree with him: while unabashedly opinionated news sources are fine as supplements, I think journalism should still strive toward objectivity, however unattainable it may be. I simply don't think that human failings are a reason to throw the whole idea out....
Yes, Jeff, most Americans realize that people like Franken and Coulter are vaudeville acts. But in Britain, they'd actually be taken seriously as reporters. You really think that's a good thing?...
Despite all its flaws, the American flavor of journalism is still something to be proud of. It's no accident that our papers have guys like John Burns, while the Brits have ass clowns like Andrew Gilligan. It's because our journalists do make an effort to separate opinions from facts.... And in a wonderful comment, Matt Welch seconds Bill. ...I think it's a good idea to once in a while remember the *good* that has come out of the elitist (and originally, objectively pro-capitalist) notion of high-handed newspaper objectivity. If a magic wand were to be waved, and the media were to all be like Murdoch/Guardian/blogs, and no more of this condescening above-it-all professionalism, I'd wager that we'd feel the loss pretty sharply.
Remember when CNN was the sort of AP of television news? One of the reason why CNN sucks now, in my opinion, is that it tried too hard to be like Fox, and Headline News especially tried too much to be like, I dunno, Entertainment Tonight or some crap. There is a valuable role to be played by our just-the-facts-ma'am news organizations, and I'm bummed now that we don't have a national TV network that just barfs up the straight news for 24 hours a day, without goofy anchor-jokes and interviews with minor celebrities. Bring back Lynn Vaughn!
And I'd even suggest that those of us who welcome 90% of the Britishization process are engaging in a bit of a double standard -- we love to talk about how great the New York Post is, while trashing the bias of the New York Times. Well, that makes for interesting contrarianism (and it's true that I subscribe to Murdoch, Sulzberger), but the Post is both more biased and more sloppy, and the Times (to me, at least), is a far superior newspaper. I just want markets to have (at minimum) both. News is a conversation and this is a great conversation about news.
What I love about this is not only that it's a captivating discussion but also that Matt and Bill did call me out. I reacted so strongly to Rutten's elitist, head-in-the-sand attitude that I skipped over some important caveats and thus I gave you an incomplete view of my opinion on opinionated news. Because I'm in the business, I assume you start knowing how much I value the news business, but I shouldn't assume that.
Yes, objective, just-the-facts-ma'am reporting is not only desirable, it is the essence of good journalism and of its value to its consumers. Most reporters and editors working on most stories on most newspapers or on TV are trying to report objectively and are succeeding. As I said below, there isn't a lot of bias in a fire. When I was a reporter, I covered too many stories and subjects to even attempt to have opinions on them. I know how hard my colleagues work to bring the people the news. I respect them tremendously. I love this business, or I wouldn't be in it.
However, Rutten is right that we are facing choices on the future of news and so we have to deal frankly and bluntly with both sides of bias -- that is, from the journalists' perspective and from the consumers' perspective -- when it does enter the news.
From the journalists' perspective, I'd say it's damned hard to look at, say, Iraq coverage without having to parse the perspective of the source. When The Times doesn't cover anti-terrorism demonstrations but does cover anti-American demonstrations, they and we need to ask what that means. And perhaps the time has come for even mainstream news organizations to be more open about their perspectives, so we can better judge what they report. If it is a sin to fail at objectivity it is a worse sin to conceal it or lie about it.
But there's a new factor in this equation: the consumers' desires. The audience for news is showing a preference for perspective and the evidence is clear: They're watching FoxNews more than CNN; they're reading the Guardian; they're reading weblogs; they're demanding more dialogue and transparency.
So we need to look at new ways to report news and deal with questions of objectivity, bias, and perspective.
I suggest that the way to look at it is as a conversation.
That conversation was started in a still-small voice at The Times when public editor Dan Okrent responded to complaints about the lack of coverage of the anti-terrorism demonstrations. He listened to the complaints and gave them to the Baghdad bureau and came back with, unfortunately, their excuse rather than their real reply. They said they didn't know the date (and I said I don't buy that because we all knew the date). Perhaps they just didn't have the staff to cover it. Or perhaps they thought something else was more important. Or perhaps they thought this was not important. Or perhaps they didn't think anyone would show up because they believed that most Iraqis are anti-American. They obviously thought something; the reporters, bureau bosses, and editors back in New York all made a judgment about this story. And we want to be let in on that judgment, on the process behind that decision, on the perspective that decision reveals -- because then we can better judge both The Times reporting and the event itself.
In the past, such an exchange would have been impractical; Times reporters can't end up in mail or phone dialogues with every reader. Okrent makes that slightly more practical, but that still leaves a middleman in the process: gatekeeper to the gatekeepers. (And, by the way, I said before that I wasn't sure the anti-terrorism demonstrations rose to Okrent's purview; I've now been convinced I was wrong.)
But now there is a far more practical way to have this conversation: The Internet and weblogs enable it. Those Timesmen could talk about what they covered and didn't and why and how they view this on a weblog; readers could enter into a conversation there and via links from other weblogs; the Timesmen could reply.
But that would be a very frightening thing for anyone from the classic school of American journalism to do -- utterly terrifying, for it would decentralize the control of the institution and what it properly stands for and it would reveal bias of individuals. That's why you're not seeing it happen readily.
I'll admit that it scared me at first. It still does now, as I write something like this, close to home. But in for a dime, in for a dollar, I long ago decided to let it all hang out here and because I did, I've learned a great deal about new ways to look at news and the relationship to news' consumers.
I've learned that news is a conversation.
So Rutten is right to say that we are facing "a referendum not only on America's political future but also on the direction of its news media" (he's just wrong about most of the rest). Herbert and Welch are right that we need to remind ourselves -- me first -- of the value of objective reporting. But Othello is also right that the consumers of news demand to join in on the conversation. We need to figure out how to do that. And if we do figure it out, we'll end up with a stronger news business with enhanced credibility and a richer relationship with the people it serves.
I don't pretend to know how to do that; I don't! But we do need to start trying to figure out how we could do it. We need to talk about it.
: UPDATES: Terry Heaton has more in this conversation on his blog. Ditto Henry Copeland.
December 28, 2003
More photos from Iraq
: Zeyad has new photos from Basrah.
Understudy
: Dan Drezner fills in for Andrew Sullivan.
The case for media bias
: Tim Rutten, the media critic of the LA Times, gets it wrong in so many ways.
Writing this weekend about media impartiality, he says the coming election is "a referendum not only on America's political future but also on the direction of its news media." At issue is the question being posed with increasing frequency by right- and left-wing partisans: Have the American media simply failed in their decades-long effort to separate facts from opinions and to make impartial reporting the governing ethic of their news columns? Or, alternatively, has American society's changed nature simply made the whole project irrelevant? Or, alternatively, are American media finally and simply catching up to the reality of what their audiences want?
You see, for years and years, it was assumed that American TV viewers wanted really dumb sitcoms because that's all that networks fed them and that's all they watched. But when, at long last, viewers were given quality choices -- Cosby (in his early years only), Hill St. Blues, Cheers -- they watched the quality shows.
News consumers in the U.S. have been fed only attempts at impartiality or objectivity. But now they have choices; they can watch FoxNews and read the Guardian and click on weblogs -- and they do. So perhaps all along, that's what news consumers have wanted: not dull attempts at impartiality but perspective honestly revealed, bias admitted, opinion included.
Rutten gets one thing right: Bias is a nonissue in most reporting: There is a certain kind of bright but brittle mind that loves this sort of either/or thinking. What such minds cannot accept is the common-sensical notion that real life — including that of the press — is lived mostly in the pragmatic middle. There, experience has demonstrated that intellectual rigor and emotional self-discipline enable journalists to gather and report facts with an impartiality that — though sometimes imperfect — is good enough to serve the public's interest in the generality of cases. (Get this guy an editor: "in the generality of cases"? Jeesh!)
But, yes, when I reported on a 4 a.m fire on the midnight shift at the Tribune years ago, I had no bias; I was concerned only with getting the facts and quotes and lead right. What bias could there be in a fire? Hot is hot.
Yet Rutten's missing the point. We're not talking about bias in workaday reporting; we're talking about bias (or perspective or opinion) in reporting on politics and war and such. So Rutten's one gimme is quite irrelevant.
Next, Rutten goes with the accepted -- but wrong -- wisdom that the base sociological reason behind all this is a deep division in America. I don't accept that. I said a few weeks ago that we're not a divided people; we're persons divided, each of us debating issues, wondering which way to vote. And the real truth is that most people don't think about or talk about these topics every day. Politics is not life, people. Politics is merely politics. "It's certainly true that we are now two Americas," said CNN political analyst Bill Schneider, who is also a leading scholar of public opinion. "We're seeing this with greater clarity as we move further into this election cycle. There is no attempt to find a center. On the left, the Democratic front-runner, Howard Dean, wants to purge the party of its centrists, to repudiate the 'Third Way' Bill Clinton advocated. On the right, not even President George W. Bush talks about compassionate conservatism anymore. Look at the bestseller lists. They're dominated by people like Al Franken and Michael Moore on the left and Bill O'Reilly and Anne Coulter on the right."
Our nonfiction literature, in other words, is today a shouting match. In such a climate, according to Schneider, "people who are as angry and convinced as the activists are today don't want impartial journalism. They've staked out their positions, and now they want the press to take sides too.
"Partisanship has grown much harsher in recent years, no question. There is also a more bitter atmosphere in the country generally because our politics have come to involve issues of values and religion in a way they did not 30 years ago." Rutten and Schneider both insult us, the people. We are not Franken and Coulter. They are our entertainment. They are to politics what Michael Jackson is to music: extremes, circus animals, clowns. We see that. Why can't you?
And I would say that the partisanship was much sharper, much more divided, much angrier in the Vietnam era. But then, some people want to paint this as another Vietnam era. It is not.
Rutten continues the patronization, saying that church attendance is the clearest indicator of voting behavior. That's statistically flawed and prejudicial. The implication is that church-goers are conservative. But most of the church-goers I know are liberal. This is not cause-and-effect; it is not even a one-to-one correlation. It's like saying that kids who watch TV eat junk food as if the TV fed it to them instead of their parents.
Besides, if this religous rule were true, why would Howard Dean suddenly start dropping Jesus' name?
At the end, Rutten rejects opinionated media from two historical perspectives. First, he says that in the Civil War, we had biased media and it didn't do us any good. Different world, man: different time, different country, different media, different technology, different people, different world, bogus comparison. Second, he says that the era of attempted objectivity has "coincided with a period of unequaled prosperity in the American media." Another meaningless correlation.
Look at Time Warner stock, Tim: CNN was once worth a fortune to the company (and to Ted Turner before that). Now, it has been eclipsed by FoxNews. Viewership for network news is down. Newspapers grow via online. The Internet is stealing the news audience.
Wishful thinking, mate.
No, the swing to news with perspective/bias/opinion does not come from (a) sharp divisions in the nation, (b) religion, (c) bad business. The swing comes because that's what the audience, the consumers, the people you want to serve want. But you're not listening to them. And that's not their problem. That's your problem.
: See more wise reaction to Rutten at Winds of Change. Rutten seems to have missed that whole Reformation thing; the notion that truth might not have to be derived from a priesthood - and make no mistake, when he starts talking about 'intellectual rigor and emotional self-discipline ,' he's talking about a priesthood - is something that went by the wayside in Western society a number of years ago....
As I've noted before, I think that one of the most important functions of the blogosphere is to provide some public check on journalism, and to do so not because any one blogger is better-informed or smarter, but the because the dialog among blogs can quickly knock down bad facts or unsupported ideas.
Rutten, (and his boss Jon Carroll) in closing journalism off from that kind of dialog, are taking the position of Linda Ham, the shuttle manager for Columbia who cut off discussion of the possible damage from the foam strike. But it's not rocket science. It's only reporting.
Username: blog; Password: blog
: Glenn Reynolds is stomping his foot on the ground in frustration at the Hartford Courant's registration. I understand and sympathize.
Now I'm in a bit of a conflict of interest here because the sites I work on do now require lite registration (the online equivalent of name, rank and serial number: zip code, age, and gender). I don't mind that kind of effort if it helps a site that gives me free content build a better business -- it does -- and if I have to do it only once and if I don't have to remember a user name and password.
If a blogger I liked asked me for such registration or even more, I'd probably do it in a flash out of personal loyalty (wouldn't you?)
But like Glenn, when faced with the need to give blood type and sexual history and SAT scores and with the even more troubling need to try my feeble memory with another damned user name and password for a site I may visit once a year via a link, I often turn and run. Not worth it.
But I don't face that problem with the LA Times's onerous registration for a simple reason: I use the laexaminer username and laexaminer password so conveniently and generously created by Ken Layne (or was it Matt Welch?) long ago (and still used -- see this Winds of Change post linking to the LAT today).
And so I'm surprised we haven't seen people creating a universal username and password (blog/blog) for sites that demand onerous registration: Try to get into the site with the blog/blog combination; if it doesn't work, register under that combination to do the next guy in a favor.
But do that just for sites you're going to visit only occasionally. If you live in Hartford, you are, in fact, better off going through the full registration because you'll probably get advertising and perhaps content that is, in fact, more useful to you. If you plan to speak in forums that require registration, you won't want every Tom-Dick-and-Bozo speaking as you. But if you live in Knoxville, well, that's just a pain.
: Pssst, Glenn: I just tried to get into the Courant site with laexaminer/laexaminer. It worked. Maybe that's already the secret password everybody knows....
At last...
: Someone has figured out a way to make cricket watchable. [via Tim Blair]
Think global, listen local
: Greg Allen has a great idea -- collecting taxi music: ...the encounter rekindled a project I'd begun several years ago but abandoned: TaxiMusic.net....
I'd been in the habit of asking taxi drivers wherever I went if they had a tape we could listen to. The response was almost always the same: "you don't want to listen to it; it's ______ (Punjabi, Urdu, Island, Ethiopian) music," followed by the floodgates opening on an enthusiastic explanation of what the music means. ("She loves the boy but cannot meet him." "This is the Koran; it's a prayer.") Somewhere in our storage unit is a shopping bag of my own, full of tapes I bought from taxi drivers over the years before weblogs and mp3-streaming winamp. Better yet, let's get taxi drivers weblogging: real moblogging.
News is everywhere
: Bill Quick has a new vision for a weblog he's about to try out, so check it out.
December 27, 2003
Bam's history
: Alireza has dramatic photos of the Bam citadel before and after the earthquake.
: Pedram also has pictures he took when he was a tourist in Bam.
Reality TV
: Cory Bergman at Lost Remote asks: Who would air Saddam's execution?
Oh, the poor Queen
: First, her children turn out to be twits. Then a dog murders her pooch. And now a historian says that Queen Elizabeth is not the rightful monarch of England. Instead, it's an Aussie forklift driver.
Fight! Fight!
: The comments over at the History News Network are crackling with a schoolyard brawl among various luminaries: Christopher Hitchens, Todd Gitlin, Sean Wilentz. Enjoy. [via Relapsed Catholic]
Imported
: The mad cow came from Canada.
You are what (they let you) eat
: Jackie is watching a sad British reality show -- the debate by MPs trying to natter and nanny their citizens' diets: Before falling asleep, I'd been deeply engrossed in a BBC Parliament broadcast of a meeting of the House of Commons health committee. Representatives from Cadbury Schweppes and Pepsi were trying to explain to the MPs why TV advertising of junk food shouldn't be banned. The MPs quite frankly didn't seem to get it, with one (whose name I forget) saying with no small amount of awe in his voice, "The more effective your advertising, the more crisps and chocolate bars you'll sell!" No sugar, Sherlock.
The concept of personal choice seems foreign to this lot, and the idea that the government should perhaps not be in the business of trying to save people from every possible bad choice they are now free to make -- right down to an ill-advised packet of crisps, piece of shortbread or can of fizzy drink -- seems not to have occurred to them. Or if it has, they've dismissed it and carried on with the desperate urge to nanny.
The end of free
: The last free Julie Burchill column here. Now she moves to The Times, which charges. She should convince her new masters to let her start a weblog and put up her columns.
Priorities
: Read Iranian weblogs and you'll pick up a current of anger at the Iranian government for not spending money to build stronger, safer structures in this earthquake-plagued nation. Iran For Dummies says: Iran as every one knows is on the seismic line, we have experienced deadly earthquakes:
- Sept. 16, 1978; northeast Iran; magnitude 7.7; 25,000 killed.
-May 10, 1997; northern Iran; magnitude 7.1; 1,500 killed.
-June 21, 1990; northwest Iran; magnitude 7.3 to 7.7; 50,000 killed.
-June 22, 2002; northwestern Iran, magnitude 6; at least 500 killed....
They can't refer this tragedy to Al-Qaeda; they can't fool us with the will of God or the holy experiment placed by Allah. I as an Iranian blame this tremendous casualty and deaths on government and lack of precautions for people’s safety. I blame it to the lack of risk management of Iran’s Government, indeed when they are funding terrorists in Palestine, when they are investing money on Ayatollahs to research about Islam and its propagation, they do not have money to invest on people’s safety. : I was going to Pedram's site to find a quote on this and see that he has reached his bandwidth limit. All the more reason for Google to let him earn ad revenue!
: UPDATE: Iran accepts aid from any country... except Israel. The mullahs hate the Jews more than they care for their own people. Strong power, hate is. Strong and deadly.
: UPDATE: Dan Gillmor suggests that the presidential candidates propose to donors matching contributions for campaigns and for Iranian earthquake victims.
December 26, 2003
Bedtime stories with Karl Rove
: Yes, really, bedtime stories with Karl Rove.
Inside Operation Red Dawn
: Jeremy Botter, a medic in Iraq, publishes his story as one of the 600 soldiers in Operation Red Dawn, the capture of Saddam Hussein.
Worse and worse
: Good God. The toll in Iran's earthquake is rising to 20,000, Reuters now says.
Others have noted that the severity of the quake was equivalent to that in California a few days ago. (Update: I stand corrected. The comments reveal that the Iran quake was .3 higher on the Richter scale and increases in the scale are exponential.)
: Pedram has another suggestion for where to send contributions.
: Here is a press release from the charity Pedram recommends, Mercy Corps.
: Keep returning to Iranian Truth for excellent links and updates.
It was a dark and stormy train...
: Kottke snoops on the creative process.
Dean's Christmas
: A day after Howard Dean went out of his way to start dropping Jesus' name before heading South to campaign, Jeff Miller [via Relapsed Catholic] points out that Dean's Christmas message doesn't mention Jesus but instead Saint FDR. It's an odd message, in fact. Nothing about the warmth and joy the holiday, just another chance to obliquely complain about the war. It would appear that Dean's having trouble grokking God.
: See also Franklin Foer's fine New Republic piece that says a secular candidate can't win the presidency (yet), quoting a 2000 Pew poll that says 70 percent of Americans want their President to be a person of faith.
: I'm not hoping that Dean turns himself into a Bush-Christian to win. Quite the contrary. If he is, in fact, a Congregationalist, like me -- of the reform tradition, open, progressive, mainline, and not fundamentalist -- then I'd love to see that view of religion take to the stage instead of just the conservative brand. But it appears that Dean is either embarrassed about religion or not religious (in which case, his sudden discover of faith would be dubious).
An eater after my own heart(burn)
: JKrank, author of the Sophia Sideshow, whose topic is often food, returned to the U.S. from Bulgaria for the holidays with one wish fulfilled: "I did go to Taco Bell, and it was everything I hoped for."
The Iranian earthquake:
: Pedram is on top of the tragic Iranian earthquake news.... including complications related to giving relief: Have been doing some more research on this as a few bloggers wanted to start a fund and were busy finding suitable NGO's inside Iran to give the money to, but apparently for those of us in USA to attempt to send donations through other means may be a violation of sanctions and subject to prosecution. In short, we aren't free to decide how our donations are spent. : Here's the National Iranian American Council disaster relief page.
: IranMania's earthquake news here.
: IranFilter is keeping up with the latest.
: Iranian Truth has tons of good links, including Iranian blogger comments.
: Persian Blogger has a beautiful photo of the history lost.
: To all my newfound Iranian blogging friends: I hope you and your families are safe and secure.
The clipification of life
: Smart Mobs tells us that TextAmerica, the incongruously named moblog photo site, now offers mobile video clips. It won't be days before we'll see a celebrity caught doing something there. (Then flesh.) Then news. Then advertising: quick clips of homes for sale, personals, bands for hire, hotel rooms. Ten seconds tells the story.
OD on me
: I'm flattered to be the subject of a Norm profile today.
December 25, 2003
Dean finds religion
: Two days ago, in the words of the NY Times, Joe Lieberman called "for strengthening the role of religion in public life and took a veiled swipe at Howard Dean, who has run a steadfastly secular campaign." "I know that some people believe that faith has no place in the so-called public square," said Mr. Lieberman, an observant Jew. "They forget that the constitutional separation of church and state, which I strongly support, promises freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. Some people forget that faith was central to our founding and remains central to our national purpose and our individual lives." And today, Dean finds religion in the Boston Globe: Presidential contender Howard B. Dean, who has said little about religion while campaigning except to emphasize the separation of church and state, described himself in an interview with the Globe as a committed believer in Jesus Christ and said he expects to increasingly include references to Jesus and God in his speeches as he stumps in the South.
Dean, 55, who practices Congregationalism but does not often attend church and whose wife and children are Jewish, explained the move as a desire to share his beliefs with audiences willing to listen....
He acknowledged that he was raised in the ''Northeast'' tradition of not discussing religious beliefs in public, and said he held back in New Hampshire, where that is the practice. But in other areas, such as the South, he said, he would discuss his beliefs more openly. The "Northeast" tradition? I'd say it's more the reform or liberal tradition. There are those who evangelize and those who don't. I don't. So I don't talk about religion easily; I've done so here when it has been relevant to another discussion. So I respect Dean's reluctance to talk God.
But saying that he's going to talk Jesus just because he's going into the South smacks of religious pandering. It's likely to insult Southerners -- and fundamentalists -- that he's willing to acknowledge religion only because he's trying to get votes south of the Mason-Dixon line.
This may be the religious equivalent of his Confederate-flag-on-the-back-of-pickups remark.
He may as well have said he wants to appeal to the voters who have have fish stickers on the back of their Chevys.
Then one bloggy Christmas Eve
: Halley's Christmas carol.
The moral crisis of North Korea
: Iraq was a humanitarian crisis -- whether or not it was a security crisis -- and over at Harry's place, Johann argues that the same is true of North Korea. The worst human rights abuses in the world - including government engineered famines - are unfolding in North Korea today. Since the US isn't involved, the Chomskyites aren't interested. But the pro-intervention left - if we are serious about human rights - cannot take the same morally blank position.
Musharraf survives another attack
: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf narrowly survives another terrorist assassination attempt as two human bombs kill themselves and 12 innocents.
: Newsweek says such attacks will help lead us to bin Laden: Yet such operations—which require wide networks of operatives, one of whom might be interested in a $25 million reward—could provide intelligence-gathering opportunities to Western agents.
The real test of bin Laden's vulnerability may now come in Pakistan. If the attack on Musharraf proves to be Qaeda-linked—rather than an "inside" assassination attempt, perhaps by members of the Pakistani military—it could backfire against bin Laden by provoking the Pakistani president into decisive action. [via Drezner]
And Merry Christmas again
: It's 1 in the morning. The beard's still white, but I'm Santa no more. Duties done. Church over. Morning approaching very quickly.
It was a wonderful night at our little church. Sometimes, everything just goes right. Our early, family service was packed with kids. They gathered up around our associate pastor, Virginia, for her children's sermon by the creche. They crowded in like a holy mosh pit and then the little ones started storming the stage, they were so fascinated. One of our favorite little girls was answering questions about the Christmas story like an expert and I was proud, because my wife teaches her Sunday school class. The children were darling. Some new folks from the neighborhood came -- always good news in a new and growing church.
After dinner and tucking the kids in, I was back at church for the candlelight service of lessons and carols, in which I try my best not to ruin things by hitting the wrong note (at least not so loud that anyone could notice) or reading the wrong words (I rewrote God only a little). Our choirmaster, a high-school choral teacher with the tenor voice of a woodwind, sang an amazing duet with a former student of his. The music went well. Tons of new people from the neighborhood came. I stood at the door at the end and just ended up shaking hands with them all as they left; "Merry Christmases" abounded.
This Christmas snuck up on me; a week ago, I couldn't believe it was a week away. But this Christmas is turning out nicely.
Those of you who've read this space for the last two years (all two of you) know that at emotional cues, I often return to September 11th as a touchstone. Two Christmases ago was so hard. Last Christmas was still difficult. This Christmas, at last, begins to feel like the celebration it is supposed to be. I can't wait for the morning (and I won't have to wait long with two kids who'll beat the sun up).
Merry Christmas, my friends.
December 24, 2003
Christmas Eve
: Off to church: kids' service; choir rehearsal; late service; Santa duties...
Please see my Christmas Eve thoughts and prayers for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan below.
And let me add that everything I say there extends as well to the CPA workers and to the journalists who are there, away from their families and at risk, to try to bring us the news. They all are sacrificing in the name of freedom.
If Dean is stopped, will he (and his Deanies) bolt?
: John Robb continues the discussion (news being a conversation, of course) about the Dean web movement with a fascinating question. He says we don't disagree about the essential structure of the online movement and then adds: However, it is pretty clear to me that the people supporting Dean have ... chosen to join a community of like minded people. That community's relationships are now being etched into social software (that automates many of the difficult parts community development and maintenance -- this provides the productivity boost that gives this campaign its momentum). Can this community survive a defeat? The history of American politics suggests no. Will we see it develop a platform, voting mechanisms, and a nomination process to field candidates that run against other Democrats in the future? Maybe or maybe not (this time). At the same time, New York Times columnist William Safire said he fears a Dean Democratic defeat, for be believes that Howard and the Deanies (sounds like a third-rank '50s garage band, no?) would bolt and run as an independent. He sees a dangerous cleft in the Democratic party. : He is not the sort who gives up easily. Nor is he likely to ask Clark or whomever in a smoke-free room for the No. 2 slot. Dean has grass-roots troops, a unique fund-raising organization, the name recognition and the fire-in-the-belly, messianic urge to go all the way on his own ticket.
Politronic chatter picked up by pundits monitoring lefty blogsites and al-Gora intercepts flashes the warning: If stopped, Dean may well bolt.
That split of opposition would be a bonanza for Bush. In a two-man race, the odds are that he would beat Dean comfortably, but in a three-party race, Bush would surely waltz in with the greatest of ease.
Here's my problem: Such a lopsided, hubris-inducing result would be bad for Bush, bad for the G.O.P., bad for the country. Landslides lead to tyrannous majorities and big trouble.
Which is why I worry about Dean not getting the Democratic nomination. : A still-unformed thought: I wonder whether the big impact of Dean online movement is a feeling of empowerment.
I sat down with some good folks trying to boost the online presence of an issue movement and I lectured them that "you have to look like a movement even before you are one." That's not the cynical comment it may sound like. It's the way things are done now, post-Dean: You need to involve people; make them feel involved; make them feel invested; make them feel heard. That is what Dean & community have done so well.
So the thing is: Once a community is started, does it feel like a movement with legs of its own? Does it live without Dean? Probably not. Does it live with Dean if he bolts? Likely yes.
What I'm dancing around is that while the digital Dean doesn't change the essence of a campaign, it may well change the essence of the movement, of the supporters and how they think. It may make them not only more connected but more independent of party hierarchy, less controllable. Only time will tell the impact.
Air France security cancellations
: Breaking news that six flights into and out of France were canceled because of security concerns. What's sobering is that this wasn't something they saw on the flight but was, instead, done because of American intelligence. The chatter is getting louder and louder. I wonder (and hope) whether this is just an effort to harass us ("Hey, Osama, let's start speaking French and see what happens...") but I fear it's real.
Low-cost iPod?
: Reports of a low-cost ($100) iPod (flash memory vs. hard drive) coming soon.
Hosting question
: I'm thinking of switching to dedicated hosting and need some recommendations and advice.
I'm very happy with Hosting Matters but I'm going way over on bandwidth (I pay $26/month for 20 gigs; this month, I'm already over 50; that means an additional $90; clearly, this does not pay!). But Hosting Matters' dedicated servers are way too expensive, starting at $280/month.
ServerBeach offers a dedicated server (with 450 gigs) for $129/month with Cpanel.
I want to be able to host my site plus my son's plus the church and various other things; none adding up to much, but I want the flexibility of adding domains and I don't want to pay endless bandwidth.
And will I get the same level of service at a dedicated host that I get from Hosting Matters (who always impress me)?
Advice? Please....
The real emergent democracies
: O'Reilly's adding an Emergent Democracy confab to its schedule in February.
If you really want to talk about emergent democracy, try talking Iranian and Iraqi weblogs!
The Man is still The Man
: John Robb gets carried away with himself: One other thing to consider, are Dean or Clark the leaders of their respective movements? Increasingly no. The communities that have sprung up around these men are now bigger than they are. They have a life of their own. Let's let the hot air out of this technopolitical bubble before it bursts. That's what I've been trying to do in this contrarian post and this one and in arguing with Jay Rosen here. Weblogs and community have made big changes in campaigning this year -- in fundraising, in organizing, in the sense of involvement and excitement. But they have not changed the essential structure of a campaign: The candidate is still the candidate; the party line is still the party line; that's still a top-down and one-way path. Dean and his chief advisers are still very much in control of his campaign and technocrats and fawning commentators and blog commenters shouldn't fool themselves otherwise. It's still politics, folks. It will be a movement when the movement ousts the candidates. Until then, it's still a campaign.
Quotable: Tim Blair cuts-and-pastes up a year's worth (and a book's worth) of quotables.
No ideals
: Scott Rosenberg finds acidly practical political advice from Tony Kushner (Angels in America) in Mother Jones: Kushner: Listen, here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this. The GOP has developed a genius for falling into lockstep. They didn't have it with Nixon, but they have it now. They line up behind their candidate, grit their teeth, and help him win, no matter who he is.
Jones: You're saying progressives are undone by their own idealism?
Kushner: The system isn't about ideals. The country doesn't elect great leaders. It elects f***ed-up people who for reasons of ego want to run the world. Then the citizenry makes them become great.
December 23, 2003
Merry Christmas to our people in
Iraq and Afghanistan
: It is now Christmas Eve day in Iraq and Afghanistan and so let us turn our thoughts and prayers and gratitude to our soldiers there.
They are away from their families and loved ones. They face danger every day. But they are generously bringing a great gift of freedom to people who have lived under the thumb of despots.
Remember that Christmas is not about presents and snow and Santa, of course. Christmas is not clean and shining and bright. As my sister, the Rev. Cindy Jarvis, preached last Sunday, "we tidy up the stable so antiseptically, deck the halls so exquisitely, reason our way to the manger with such sophistication that we avoid the scandal and deny the flesh his incarnation embraced, the body his resurrection redeemed."
No, Christmas is about freeing God's people from suffering. Christmas is about the least of them brought to a humble stable where nothing was going right: Then there was no room in the inn; now there is not enough electricity. Herod lurked in the shadows then; Baathists and al-Queda do now. These are the facts of life among those who need help.
I'm not suggesting, of course, that the soldiers are messiahs. But they are shepherds come to herald a new age and a bright future. They are wise men bearing gifts of great value -- freedom, safety, democracy, modernity.
Let us pray for the safety of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us pray for their families, spending Christmas without them. Let us pray for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to find a bright future. Let us give thanks for the sacrifice our soldiers and those of many nations are making in the name of peace.
And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."
Murder in the palace
: Prince Anne's dog kills Queen Elizabeth's dog. "The incident has certainly put a damper on the Christmas holiday. It's terrible and everyone at Sandringham is very upset," the unnamed source was quoted as saying.
Elizabeth was said to be "absolutely devastated" over the death of Pharos after he was savaged by Dottie, according to the newspaper.
Just last year Anne, known as the Princess Royal, was fined after Dottie attacked two children in Windsor Great Park, in west London.
Iraqi Christmas
: Here's what Christmas is like for Iraqi Christians.
THE last-minute gift
: Give the gift of blog.
The geek cafe
Scoble and Mayfield happen to meet at a Cheesecake Factory and geek out over the POS system.
Iceblog
: Last year, there was a blog from Antarctica that melted. Here's a new one.
The chosen beer
: Just heard a funny WNBC report on He'brew, The Chosen Beer. There's Messiah Bold, "It's the Beer You've Been Waiting For!" It comes with slogans aplenty: "Jesus, that's good beer!"
Bloghetto: official vs. independent weblogs
: Jonathan Chait of The New Republic complains on his Dean-o-phobe blog that the Dean campaign is creating a comfy online island in its weblogs: One of the most disturbing things about Dean and his hard-core supporters is that they give the impression that they know nothing at all of why President Bush is successful, and therefore what it takes to beat him. Read the pro-Dean blogs, and the you come away with the view that Bush is strong because he's ruthless and has lots of money, and therefore if the Democrats are also ruthless and raise lots of money, they can beat him. This ignorance is compounded by the fact that many Deanies seem to exist in a isolated cultural milieu in which everybody is secular, socially liberal, and antiwar. They can't fathom why those things might hurt Dean in a general election because they don't ever talk to or read anybody who thinks differently. Dean's Internet networking--which has had lots of positive effects on American politics--has probably intensified this cloistering, by creating intellectual ghettos on the web where true believers can interact, undisturbed by those who don't share their faith. Gene over at Harry's Place agrees: Well, yes, which is one reason to avoid those cyber-ghettos. And it's one reason I appreciate the wide range of opinions reflected in the posts and comments at Harry's Place. I'm pleased that-- no matter what you believe-- you can't get away with intellectual laziness here. Many ideological web sites are devoted largely to carricaturing the opposing side; it's hard to do that here because someone from the opposing side will usually call you on it. Right.
: Official weblogs, by the very fact that they are annointed as as official, must give the party line (see my earlier post on the essentially and necessarily one-way and propagandistic nature of an official weblog). You go to the official blog to find out what is official. They try to influence down.
Independent weblogs, on the other hand, have more freedom to discuss and argue. You go to them to see what the people say. They try to influence across and up. Their independence is their value.
: UPDATE: Dave Winer went to see Dean last night. His post isn't up because of a rabid bot going after his server. But the post is up on his RSS feed. A quote: There were 150 people in the room, mostly it was about lies, bedtime stories, telling people what they want to hear. No minds activated. Some good lines, a glimmer that minds may have played a role in the Dean campaign at one time, but not today. Now they're trying to get elected, and I believe in doing so are guaranteeing that they won't. If you're looking for an airbrushed guy, Clark is much stronger. I don't know why people care how much money Dean has raised, that's just going to buy commercials. I'd love to see one of the pols use their money to solve some problems now, win or lose. Put some teeth behind We Love The Internet and The Internet Loves Us.
Can AOL be offended?
: Kathy (Relapsed Catholic) Shaidle writes that AOL blocked email about something she wrote because they received too many complaints about it.
What's this, censorship by friend network: Censter? Wow! -- my stupid poem, my puny blog, deemed "offensive" by a colossal corporation. My first reaction was that "Banned by AOL" would look great on my homepage. Then I started to wonder, as the anonymous commenter had: Does AOL censor email? And if so how? When and why?
The Iranian Howard Dean
: BlogsCanada has the second part of its interview with Iranian blog pioneer Hossein Derakhshan, aka Hoder, up now. He talks about running for Parliament, better relations with Israel, and lots more.
Ad(non)sense
: Pedram Moallemian, a very talented Iranian expat blogger, is having a proper fit about Google's Adsense program dropping him.
He passed all the tests to run the ads; he was running them; then they suddenly stopped. He asked Google and got an automated reply about possibly inappropriate content. He pressed and got this: "Although the nature of your content really may not f | |