CNN fired Chez Pazienza for blogging at Huffington post - not just because he broke a vague rule by blogging, but because of the content of his blog. [Link]
During my last couple of years as a television news producer, I watched the networks try to recover from a six year failure to bring truth to power (the political party in power being irrelevant incidentally; the job of the press is to maintain an adversarial relationship with the government at all times) and what's worse, to pretend that they had a backbone all along. I watched my bosses literally stand in the middle of the newsroom and ask, "What can we do to not lead with Iraq?" -- the reason being that Iraq, although an important story, wasn't always a surefire ratings draw. I was asked to complete self-evaluations which pressed me to describe the ways in which I'd "increased shareholder value." (For the record, if you're a rank-and-file member of a newsroom, you should never under any circumstances even hear the word "shareholders," let alone be reminded that you're beholden to them.) I watched the media in general do anything within reason to scare the hell out of the American public -- to convince people that they were about to be infected by the bird flu, poisoned by the food supply, or eaten by sharks. I marveled at our elevation of the death of Anna Nicole Smith to near-mythic status and our willingness to let the airwaves be taken hostage by every permutation of opportunistic degenerate from a crying judge to a Hollywood hanger-on with an emo haircut. I watched qualified, passionate people worked nearly to death while mindless talking heads were coddled. I listened to Lou Dobbs play the loud-mouthed fascist demagogue, Nancy Grace fake ratings-baiting indignation, and Glenn Beck essentially do nightly stand-up -- and that's not even taking into account the 24/7 Vaudeville act over at Fox News. I watched The Daily Show laugh not at our mistakes but at our intentional absurdity.Cloverfield
We saw Cloverfield last night. Don't believe bad reviews – I saw several, and I can summarize by saying that they didn't like the film because they didn't get it. One of the more clueful review I read: Marc Savlov's in the Austin Chronicle. Marc knows about this stuff:
Cloverfield is the most intense and original creature feature I've seen in my adult moviegoing life, and that's coming from a guy who knows his Gojira from his Gamera and his Harryhausen from his Honda. Cloverfield isn't a horror film – it's a pure-blood, grade A, exultantly exhilarating monster movie in the grand tradition of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, It Came From Beneath the Sea, and, to a lesser extent, Merian C. Cooper's King Kong. What makes Cloverfield so memorable and such a genuinely riveting filmgoing experience has less to do with the creature itself, whatever it is, and everything to do with Reeves' direction and a whip-smart, stylistically invisible screenplay that dispenses entirely with any and all genre rules and, brilliantly, views the catastrophic, literally earthshaking events through the lens of one character's digital video camera, complete with rough, nerve-jangling, in-camera edits and an "official" Department of Defense Eyes Only time stamp.
My own thoughts about why the film's great:
- It's a giant monster film told from a different perspective, that of the people on the ground, running.
- It's brilliant about using the constrained perspective of a single handheld camera to tell the story.
- The filmmakers showed real intelligence in realizing their monster.
- So much of the story is inferred, not explicit.
Texas Community Media Summit
I'll be attending the March 1 Texas Community Media Summit - I was at a similar gathering 2-3 years ago, which was useful, but citizen media was new; it's matured since then, and I suspect we'll have more to talk about this year. This summit is for "Texas community media makers, stakeholders, activists, and advocates." If you're a Texas blogger, you should be there. [Link]
Harry Knowles caught a preview of "Clovefield"; raves about it at Ain't It Cool News. We'll be there opening night!
But this film isn’t about the scientist, the generals, the Presidents, the mayors or any of the big people. This time, the film is from the perspective of those people that live in those buildings that the monster is breaking through. This is about the people running in the street that scream, “GODZILLA!!!” and run. This is about trying to survive that insanity. Not just that, but to try and save one life.
Like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but instead of Nazis it’s a giant monster.
This is a handheld camera movie – knowing this and knowing not to sit too close is probably a good thing… but having said that… you can’t sit far enough from the screen to feel safe. As many of you people know, I am in a wheelchair – and while watching movies, I have my brakes on. There was one moment, so unexpected and so intense that I went 3 ft back.
Austin Independent Game Conference
My pal Steve Farrer just sent me a rundown on the Austin Independent Game Conference at the end of the week (November 29-30). Here's the info:
The video game industry is an $11 billion market and this conference will give you an insight into how it works and who is doing what….Maker Faire MediaThere are some great speakers lined up this year:
KeynotesRichard Garriott, NCSoft Research & Game Design - Spending the Time to Get It RightMike Wilson & Harry Miller, Gamecock Media All the Reasons You Will Fail or Don't Even Think About ItPLUS – Game Demo night – bring your latest game and demo it to an audience of your peers…
Some of the Session Topics:
- 3D Engine Comparisons
- Best Practices in Quality Assurance
- How the State and Community Can Help You (Make Your Game)
- Pitching to Publishers
- Ads in Games
- Game Audio 101
We also have 2 new additions to the program that are very exciting:
- Project Horseshoe, the premier think-tank for the game industry will be presenting their 2007 findings for the first time at IGC! This is a rare opportunity to hear about the latest findings and recommendations from some of the best minds in the industry.
- Protecting Your IP will be presented by Epic Games' outside counsel for licensing the Unreal Engine, Zachary Bishop. Zach has negotiated license rights to this engine across the world, including within China. His experience and Insight are a terrific addition to the program.
Earlybird pricing is just $125 for the full conference program…students can register for $75!
Get all the details and register now at www.independentgameconference.com
Here's a quick video clip of our DIY Home installation at Maker Faire:
You can also check out my set of Maker Faire photos at Flickr.
Doug Rushkoff interviewMy latest Worldchanging column is an interview with Doug Rushkoff. [Link]
So I go and talk at lots of companies, and try to help them figure out whether there's anyone on their staff who is connected to the industry that the company is a part of. And then, to look at how to make that person or persons more central to what the company says about itself.
All the rest of it – this Blink/LizardBrain/CultureOfPropaganda nonsense is just a way for sold-out intellectuals to sell books to cynical marketers. It's all based on the faulty observation that human beings make all of their choices in the same reptilian fashion. Just because a person's brain may light up in certain way when the see a blue Pepsi can doesn't mean that they'll make important life choices that way – or even trivial choices at the grocery store.
The kind of marketing you're talking about is an effort to fill in where advertising has failed. And while it doesn't really work to sell particular products, it does have a major and deleterious effect on our society. The underlying communication still gets through. And that communication is: you are not worthy, you are in need, you need to buy something to fill that hole in your soul. Mommy doesn't love you, but the corporation does.
Social Network for Journalists
Interesting development: professional journalists will have a social network called Publish2 where they "will be able to capture information that appeals to their interests and collaborate with other journalists in a private context." (Thanks to Ed Ward for the pointer.) [Link]
Publish2 is looking to expand on much of the groundwork that sites like Digg have created. “Digg was a real trailblazer and proved that this kind of social collaborative networking can work on a large scale and we’re looking to extend the model,” says Karp. “Digg has hit upon a certain amount of limitation with the way their open system is structured and the way it’s been dominated by its audience of young, male tech enthusiasts. What we’re aiming to do is compete with other aggregators and we’re betting that human intelligence still has superior news judgement.”
I wonder how this will compare to Jay Rosen's Assignment Zero, a site for open source journalism that brings journalists together with public sources (such as bloggers or "citizen journalists").
Jette's coordinating an Alamo Downtown (aka original Alamo) blogathon for draft house fans (which I could see stats on how many Alamo Drafthouse regulars are bloggers, bet it would be an impressive percentage). The idea here is to blog your memories of the Alamo, which will close its doors in a couple of days (as it moves to the former Ritz Theatre). [Link]
Its publishers have revamped the USA Today site to improve user experience and add new features for increased participation. From a glance at the site, the overhaul seems clueful: it's easy to navigate and easy to interact - read and add comments to each story, and add recommendations. They also invite readers to contribute photos, and they've added Pluck's Blogburst (which might already have been there - it's a service that allows traditional media sites to add content from blogs.) This is an upgrade that'll make all the other news organizations stand up and take notice. I'm wondering what the recently-overhauled NY Times will do - do they have any budget left to add more features? [Link]
It must be in the air, like Peaches en Regalia: yesterday I was thinking how much I miss Frank Zappa - his crazy beautiful music and his passionate defense of free speech. This morning Adam Thierer blogging similar thoughts about Zappa at The Technology Liberation Front. [Link]
When he was with us, he was one of the most passionate and articulate defenders of freedom of speech--not just in the entertainment industry--but in all of America. And this man knew his history. He understood why the First Amendment was so important to America's founding and why it remains one of the cornerstones upon which all other human liberties rest.
24 is one bad number
The New Yorker profiles Joel Surnow, co-creator and producer of "24." Surnow is a neoconservative who wouldn't think of toning down the show's torture scenes, let alone showing what real, legal interrogations are like. [Link]
Surnow’s rightward turn was encouraged by one of his best friends, Cyrus Nowrasteh, a hard-core conservative who, in 2006, wrote and produced “The Path to 9/11,” a controversial ABC miniseries that presented President Clinton as having largely ignored the threat posed by Al Qaeda. (The show was denounced as defamatory by Democrats and by members of the 9/11 Commission; their complaints led ABC to call the program a “dramatization,” not a “documentary.”) Surnow and Nowrasteh met in 1985, when they worked together on “The Equalizer.” Nowrasteh, the son of a deposed adviser to the Shah of Iran, grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, where, like Surnow, he was alienated by the radicalism around him. He told me that he and Surnow, in addition to sharing an admiration for Reagan, found “L.A. a stultifying, stifling place because everyone thinks alike.” Nowrasteh said that he and Surnow regard “24” as a kind of wish fulfillment for America. “Every American wishes we had someone out there quietly taking care of business,” he said. “It’s a deep, dark ugly world out there. Maybe this is what Ollie North was trying to do. It would be nice to have a secret government that can get the answers and take care of business—even kill people. Jack Bauer fulfills that fantasy.”
In recent years, Surnow and Nowrasteh have participated in the Liberty Film Festival, a group dedicated to promoting conservatism through mass entertainment. Surnow told me that he would like to counter the prevailing image of Senator Joseph McCarthy as a demagogue and a liar. Surnow and his friend Ann Coulter—the conservative pundit, and author of the pro-McCarthy book “Treason”—talked about creating a conservative response to George Clooney’s recent film “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Surnow said, “I thought it would really provoke people to do a movie that depicted Joe McCarthy as an American hero or, maybe, someone with a good cause who maybe went too far.” He likened the Communist sympathizers of the nineteen-fifties to terrorists: “The State Department in the fifties was infiltrated by people who were like Al Qaeda.” But, he said, he shelved the project. “The blacklist is Hollywood’s orthodoxy,” he said. “It’s not a movie I could get done now.”
This is the first year I've watched episodes of "24" – it seemed to me that the show's stayed above the liberal conservative dualism to an extent. There are bad guys on both sides. What disturbs me more than the show's politics is the unrelenting focus on torture. The author of the New Yorker piece, Jane Mayer, tells how U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point and three real interrogators met with the "24" team to try to convince them to stop showing violent and clearly illegal interrogations by U.S. operatives.
Finnegan and the others had come to voice their concern that the show’s central political premise—that the letter of American law must be sacrificed for the country’s security—was having a toxic effect. In their view, the show promoted unethical and illegal behavior and had adversely affected the training and performance of real American soldiers. “I’d like them to stop,” Finnegan said of the show’s producers. “They should do a show where torture backfires.”The sense of the article: that's not gonna happen.
I'm not going to give "24" any more of my time... and I find it a bit unsettling that a show espousing torture as necessary and practical is seeping its memes into the collective very-unconscious. If its audience went away, so would "24."
Fate MagazineI used to read "Fate Magazine" when I was a kid. I really dug the illustrations on the covers through the fifties, before they changed to a bland text cover with no images. I accidentally discovered a web site for "Fate." It has a bunch of the old covers where they're selling back issues, and they have posters and trading cards. It looks like they're still publishing, and they've gone back to the cool illustrated covers. The magazine itself is a collection of stories about ghosts, UFOs, and other paranormal phenomena and Forteana. (I wasn't very skeptical or cynical when I was a preteen... and I did go on to become a fan of "The X-Files.") [Link]
Olbermann on Bush
I've avoided posting about the political circus lately, if only because it's been sounding like a hallelujah chorus of "I told you so's" in the progressive blogosphere lately... and because the world needs fewer partisan messages, not more. However I can't resist posting Keith Olbermann's summary of Bush's credibility, relative to his (and unfortunately, our) adventure in Iraq. Found this at "Crooks and Liars":
Olbermann: President Bush makes no secret of his distaste for looking backward, for assessing past results.
But in our third story on the Countdown tonight… too bad.
Any meaningful assessment of the president's next step in Iraq must consider his steps and missteps so far.
So, let's look at the record:
Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said he was no nation-builder; nation-building was wrong for America.
Now, he says it is vital for America.
He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Today, U.S. troops observe Iraqi restrictions.
He told us about WMDs. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubing. Yellow-cake.
He has told us the war is necessary…Because Saddam was a threat; Because of 9/11; Osama bin Laden; al Qaeda; Because of terrorism in general; To liberate Iraq; To spread freedom; To spread democracy; To keep the oil out of the hands of terrorist-controlled states; Because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.
In pushing for and prosecuting this war, he passed on chances to get Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Muqtada al-Sadr, Osama bin Laden.
He sent in fewer troops than recommended. He disbanded the Iraqi Army, and "de-Baathified" the government. He short-changed Iraqi training.
He did not plan for widespread looting, nor the explosion of sectarian violence.
He sent in troops without life-saving equipment.
Gave jobs to foreign contractors, not the Iraqis.
Staffed U-S positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.
We learned that "America had prevailed", "Mission Accomplished", the resistance was in its "last throes".
He has said more troops were not necessary, and more troops are necessary, and that it's up to the generals, and removed some of the generals who said more troops would be necessary.
He told us of turning points: The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government,the trial of Saddam, a charter, a constitution, an Iraqi government, ¤elections, purple fingers, a new government, the death of Saddam.
We would be greeted as liberators, with flowers.
As they stood up–we would stand down, we would stay the course, we were never 'stay the course',
The enemy was al Qaeda, was foreigners, terrorists, Baathists.
The war would pay for itself, it would cost 1-point-7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion dollars.
And after all of that, today it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Republicans, Democrats, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.
Review of Extreme Democracy
I found a dispassionate review of Extreme Democracy by an associate professor of rhetoric at UT-Austin. It appears he's reviewing one of the screwy copies from the first run (based on his reference to formatting errors), and he accurately notes that the book "varies in quality even more than a normal collection does." Actually, I wouldn't say "varies in quality," but "varies in intent." He castigates Jim Moore for his "naivete," calling the Second Superpower piece "awful," apparently missing the point that was supposed to be a manifesto, not an essay. That's our fault - we should have made it clearer why we were including some of the pieces, especially since the editor we were originally working with had raised this point. [Link]
It does appear that he liked my Deanspace piece: "... others present interesting case studies of community-based technologies, especially Drupal, which was used to power many of Dean's community sites." I should probably repost that here at some point.
YouTube is late in delivering a content identification system to prevent users from posting content that infringes copyrights. Richard Waters, writing for Financial Times, suggests that this will irk traditional media companies that were holding off on lawsuits against the company, which has deeper pockets since Google bought it. [Link] Though possible lawsuits could be a major hassle for YouTube, I wonder if they would be successful, if YouTube can show a good faith effort to prevent users from posting material that infringes.
Olbermann's special commentsKeith Olbermann ran four of his "special comments" on tonight's Countdown. These are his brilliant op-ed commentaries on the state of the USA and the disturbing vagaries of the Bush regime. Check the Countdown web site for links to all of the comments.
Font popSignal to Noise blog lists the 10 most popular newspaper typefaces according to an article at creativepro ona study by Ascender Corporation, font developers based in Chicago. As a long-time student of typography, I found this pretty interesting. (I worked nights as a proofreader for a large typographer based in Austin for several years, just to learn more about the field.). In web development, I find the constraints on font selection pretty frustrating. An interesting fact I didn't know before: many newspapers have custom fonts developed specifically for them, and see it as part of their branding. This reminded me that, when Paco Nathan and I started FringeWare, Inc., one of his first projects was to develop a FringeWare font. Our art director, Monte McCarter, developed at least one other font, called Denaturez. (The thorough and dedicated Paco, having found a whole new technology to bang round on, pretty much learned everything about the technology of magazine publishing, which is why Fringe Ware Review looked so great).
Thinking about this almost makes me want to start another magazine!
Robert AltmanAltman was more than a great director, he was natural. He didn't try to own the experiences he helped create; he shared them with his cast, crew, and audience. He never won an Academy Award, but they'll be teaching and talking about Altman long after other Academy Award-winning directors are forgotten.
This is intense!A lot o' people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch o' unconnected incidents 'n things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice o' coincidence that lays on top o' everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness. - Miller in "Repo Man"
Thought about this quote after seeing a couple of very similar articles about 9/11 conspiracy theories this week - from Michael Ventura and RU Sirius. Seems they were both having the same thought, dipping into a pervasive cosmic unconsciousness...
Ventura is skeptical of blogs because "they often fail to cite their sources, and there's no way to know if they've confirmed their facts." He's even more skeptical of the 9/11 consipiracy theories, especially the one that says it was an "inside job," that the U.S. government brought down the World Trade Center. I won't say the thought hasn't crossed my own mind – an analysis that asks who benefited most from the attack could point to the Bush Administration, who clearly took full advantage of the post 9/11 senes of national unity and fear of terrorism to further it's own agenda (as Keith Olbermann said earlier this week). However as one who's played (ironically, not seriously) with many conspiracy theories in the past, I've always had a skepticism similar to Ventura's:
The conspiracy usually outlined would require dozens of people to do lots of manual labor for a considerable time with no leak then and no leak since. Perfect secrecy accomplished by, say, a hundred people. As a journalist and student of history, to me that would be strangest of all.
In this week's article he goes on to make a good point:
Even if these conspiracy theorists are right, does it matter? Does it matter which cabal of murderous madmen was responsible? What matters more is that cabals of murderous madmen now set the world's agenda. It's easy to say that, one way or another, it's always been like that, and I would agree that there have always been cabals, and some have been powerful, but what has been more powerful by far is the counterpoint of momentum and inertia of the masses of us, throughout the ages, who want to live our own lives by our own lights and do the best we can. What's changed is that technology has given cabals vastly disproportionate power.....
RUSirius is skeptical of conspiracy theories anti-conspiracy theories... pretty much everybody. He reviews a book from Popular Mechanics called Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts
It happens sometimes. People just explode . . . natural causes. - Agent Rogersz in "Repo Man."What a Rush!
Richard Rush is phenomenal.
Last night Marsha and I caught a screening of Richard Rush's "The Stunt Man" and "Psych-Out" at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, organized by Lars Nilsen, who programs the Alamo's Weird Wednesday series. Though I'd seen some of his earlier exploitation films ("Hell's Angels on Wheels," "The Savage Seven," I became a Richard Rush fan when I saw "Getting Straight" in 1970 - probably the only film to get a handle on the upheaval at the end of the 60s (which seems quaint compared to nastier contemporary upheaval, but I digress). Oddly, there wasn't a single reference to "Getting Straight" in last nights discussions before and after both films - wish they'd included it as a third feature.
We saw Rush's own print of "Stunt Man" - the studio hasn't reprinted it, though it's available on DVD along with his full-lenth documentary, "The Sinister Saga of Making the Stunt Man" – which is about the ten years it took to cut through the politics of the film industry and to get the film made. Rush mentioned how he had to keep revising the script as the Vietnam era faded into the past. The protagonist of the film is a Vietnam vet (Steve Railsback) who stumbles into a brilliant director's location shoot and becomes a stunt man for the film - and more: he becomes the soul of the film, and the key to its purpose. The director, Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole), says at one point that his film is not about fighting wars, it's about fighting windmills. Ultimately both films, Rush's and Cross's, are about paranoia fed by assumption and illusion.
Appearing with Rush: Charles Bail, a stunt man himself, who played stunt coordinator Chuck Barton in the film, and Austin's Gary Kent, who worked with Rush on several films, including "Psych-Out" (where he created the special effects).
I ran into my friend Juliette Kernion, who's behind the terrific Slackerwood blog; looking forward to her post about the screening.
Google Video: New! Improved!Actually, you know Google video's not really new, but it's replaced Froogle on the set of links hovering above the Google home page's search box, and it's certainly improved after a messy beginning. Google's not about to concede this market to YouTube. [Link]
Unlike the other choices Google lays out on its Homepage and internal search results, Google Video has become its flagship offering which represents what may materialize as the future of Google when it comes to 2.0 Style Web Community, Multimedia Advertising, Behavioral Targeting beyond search, and Google’s direction beyond our mobiles, laptops and PC’s; and into our TiVo’s, Cable Channels, Satellite & Traditional Radio, and Friendship Networks.Austin Media Justice
Austin Media Justice, a coalition of community media, technology, and social justice groups, met today to share discuss aspects of housing (and the lack of it) in Austin -- according to the announcement, "everything from affordability, sustainability, accessibility, and land use to historical preservation and gentrification." The idea was to focus on this specific issue and consider how the group can leverage community media and technology to mitigate the lack of affordable, sustainable housing. The first speaker, DeAnne Cuellar of San Antonio's Texas Media Empowerment Project, explained how the organization has worked with citizens to collect data on bias and misrepresentation in local media through their media monitoring project. They've also helped find alternatives to public access programming, which went away when the latest Texas telecommunications bill was passed, taking franchising to the state level and freeing cable companies from an obligation to negotiate local franchises. Communities like San Antonio negotiated public access programming in franchise agreements. Time Warner shut down SA's public access channel as quickly as it could, though it later provided a replacement channel, but that channel is only accessible to subscribers who pay for digital service.
The second speaker Susanna Almanza of PODER (People in Defeinse of Earth and her Resources), gave organization's history as an environmental justice group that helped shut down Austin's infamous tank farm and relocate the Austin recycling center, among others. Now the organization is focusing on gentrification of East Austin, where propoerty values have quadrupled, and as a result taxes have increased beyond any possibility of payment for many residents. One proposed solution to the housing problem: $55 million in affordable housing bonds, one of several bond propositions voters will decide in November. A first project of the media justice coalition: support the bond program, in part by noting in bias or misrepresentation in reporting prior to the election. My own proposal was for the group to put together a site for local media analysis and criticism, similar to Media Matters (which has incidentally, launched a regional sitefor Colorado). We discussed setting something like that up as part of a larger initiative that would include expansion of media monitoriong into Austin and other parts of Texas, and education on critical evaluation of media.
Digg 3.0Digg is launching a new version, which is a redesign and more. [Link]
Top of the PopsThe British no longer have Top of the Pops, but many of the performances are recycling via YouTube. [Link]
WorldChanging on the 21st Century
I spent some time recently writing material for the WorldChanging Guide to the 21st Century, which will be published around the first of the year... but you can preorder now from Amazon! I hear it's pretty heavy (at 608 illustrated pages).
Mike McCurry and Net NeutralityAdam Green of Moveon.org opens a a post about net neutrality at The Huffington Post by calling out Mike McCurry, who is fronting the "Hands of the Internet" scam. Why do I say scam? Because their message is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," implying that regulation would hurt the Internet. In many cases this is true, but regulation to preserve the Internet's openness, accessibility, and neutrality, Maybe we need a common carrier approach ("undertaking to carry for all people indifferently"), but if the Internet becomes a commercial network with tiered services operated for the benefit of the re-forming telecom monopoly, we may see an end to the explosive innovation of the last decade plus. Web 2.0 may give way to Television 2.0.
Arthur Lee has leukemia
Arthur Lee, leader of the great 60s-70s band Love, is fighting leukemia (but, then again, he's always been a fighter). Note that Love has a page on Myspace - if you're not familiar with the band, you can get acquainted there, or at the band's web site. Love's album "Forever Changes" might be the best rock album ever. [Link]
"Fear Factor": Lemann on O'ReillyEverything you wanted to know about Bill O'Reilly, but were afraid to ask - via Nicholas Lemann at The New Yorker. Actually an appreciation – who knew that Lemann was an O'Reilly fan, despite their obvious ideological differences? [Link]
The connection between the scourge of child sex abuse and liberals whom O'Reilly doesn't like – a long list that includes George Clooney, Hillary Clinton, Paul Krugman, and Alec Baldwin – may not be obvious, but, to O'Reilly's way of thinking, both are part of a national climate of permissiveness and relativism. This is manifested in the unprovable, but no doubt painful, loss of the norms that O'Reilly and his audience remember growing up with. The implied connection, anyway, gives O'Reilly a good pretext for the odd but compelling mixture of subjects on "The O'Reilly Factor," with foreign policy one minute, a lurid (one might even say titillating) sex crime the next, and the Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof's latest unfair attack on O'Reilly the next. (O'Reilly is feuding with Kristof, who has assembled from readers' pledges a notional fund to send O'Reilly on a reporting trip to Darfur. O'Reilly recently parried by saying that the Times "continues to ignore the child predator situation here in the U.S.A.") It would be useless to accuse O'Reilly of trafficking in cultural symbols and not substance, because to him cultural symbols are substance. Like every artist, he has created a territory that is distinctively his, and under anyone else's supervision would not cohere.Joi TV
Joi Ito and Justin Hall were shooting video at SXSW Interactive. Here's a sample. After leaving the Mark Warner party, they wandered over to Koriente and shot video of Silona and I (which should appear sometime somewhere).
Darren McGavin
Sad to hear that Darren McGavin died. I was a fan as far back as 1956 – my parents bought our first television set around that time, and Mike Hammer, which starred McGavin, was one of the first shows we watched regularly. If you look at his page on IMDB,, you'll see that he was all over television for years, and I caught a lot of those appearances. But I'll always think of him as Carl Kolchak, the Night Stalker (1974-75), one of my all-time favorite shows. Night Stalker featured a new monster every week, as well as a bunch of cameo appearances by great character actors from the fifties and sixties. Night Stalker inspired The X Files, and it's fitting that his final appearances were on a couple of episodes of that show. IMDB shows his last appearance as a "reporter standing at a desk," but I think that was an image transferred from the old Kolchak series. Unfortunately the recent version of Night Stalker had zero charm, and died on the vine. It needed a Darren McGavin.
Robin Good's New Media PicksEnergetic Robin Good offers yet another, er, Goody: Sharewood Picnic, his new media picks of the week. A Good way to find cool tools. [Link]
Yahoo respondsMy last post, about Yahoo's supposed decision to give up on search market dominance, drew a quick response from Qi Lu and Eckart Walther at Yahoo Search, noting "conjecture and confusion" about "Yahoo's commitment to being the world's best search engine." Great point - the CFO's comment didn't say Yahoo had given up on being the best, but that "it's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search." Best and first aren't necessarily the same. Meanwhile Caterina Fake, now a Yahoo insider, posts about her irritation with bloggers who, she says, took the Decker quote out of context... accusing them of "piling on." I didn't read what others were saying, personally, but I can see where people might've read "abandonment of search" into the quote... but that's clearly not what Susan Decker was saying.
Its Q4 earnings report describes what Yahoo's up to:
First, we are expanding our content match services through the Yahoo Publishers Network to take advantage of the growing number of small publishers on the web. We plan to add new features to beta over the coming quarters including search and enhanced ad targeting. We believe the service will ultimately position Yahoo as one of the preferred advertising partners for small and medium-sized publishers.
Second, we are focused on improving RPS to better matching in relevance algorithms. While our matching initiatives will largely benefit coverage, were also focused on improving tools to drive higher relevance and click through.
And third, we are increasing the number of easy-to-use tools for advertisers and publishers, so they can buy more keywords, touch more creative and add more listings faster.
Meanwhile, to Caterina's point about bloggers and media getting it wrong, I think the bloggers were following media on this one (headline: "Yahoo! gives up quest for search dominance"), and her real beef should be with Bloomberg, and not with bloggers like Steve Rubel.
Yahoo! capitulates, sort ofYahoo! doesn't "think it's reasonable to assume we're going to gain a lot of share from Google," according to CFO Susan Decker. "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search. We would be very happy to maintain our market share." Indeed... this sounds realistic, and I have to admit I haven't even been thinking of Yahoo as a search company. I consider it more of a media aggregator. If Yahoo's smart, it'll move to the intersection of media and interactivity - more community-based. For instance, if I was Yahoo, I'd be trying to buy Salon and its online communities, Table Talk and the WELL. [Link]
Meanwhile Yahoo! says it's not giving up on search... just search dominance. I guess you could call that a capitulation.
Washington Post: No CommentsThe Washington Post turned comments off at the post.blog. According to Exec Editor Jim Brady, the comments included too many personal attacks. More than the Post could handle... though I wonder if they were trying to use existing staff to moderate? High-volume comment areas, like forums, generally need skilled moderators, or at least experienced monitors (monitors, unlike moderators, do little to drive conversation but remove posts that include trolls or personal attacks). It's economically difficult, though, for a newspaper to staff up with 24/7 moderators, who generally get $30/hour or more for their work. Hopefully the Post will find a solution; the interactivity is vital. [Link]
Not your grandfather's encyclopedia...
I've been talking a lot about Wikipedia lately. I don't consider myself an expert on Wikipedia, but I think I get some of the issues that are cropping up after the Curry and Seigenthaler flaps. In case you missed those, Adam Curry changed a Wikipedia item on podcasting and John Seigenthaler complained bitterly about a Wikipedia article that referred to his possible involvement in the Kennedy Assassination (which is absurd; this was evidently an ill-conceived prank). These flaps turned up the volume on discussions of Wikipedia's accountability for its contents. If bad facts appear in Wikipedia, who do you blame? In traditional publishing, you blame the publisher, and that's justified because the publisher has a system for collecting, vetting, and editing content before it's published. However Wikipedia has volunteer editors who review articles and updates after they're posted, not before. The actual contributors can be anybody, and until recently they could be anonymous (though generally traceable through their IP numbers). It's a decentralized system where no single person or entity is clearly accountable for what's posted, yet it works – you've probably heard about Nature's investigation showing that Wikipedia, overall, is about as accurate as Brittanica.
Wikipedia is now requiring authentication for new posts, though you can make still anonymous updates to existing content. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's fearless leader, has said he doesn't want to pursue strong verification of identity, and that Wikipedia should be assessed on the quality of the content, and not identity or reputation.
Is Wikipedia an authoritative source? The Nature study suggests accuracy comparable to Brittanica's – and what source of information will ever be wholly authoritative? Wikipedia actually has advantages: bringing collective intelligence to bear means more minds and more perspectives are represented, and this would tend to mitigate bias. Wikipedia is also more current, and has articles on subjects you would never find in Brittanica. However there's always going to be lag between publication and editorial review, and in some cases (like Seigenthaler's) bad information will find its way into an article and linger. I wouldn't consider Wikipedia a single authoritative source (though I often use it as a reference, and link to its articles).
(BTW, fans of Wikipedia should note there's a fund drive under way.)
Rainbow ConnectionWiley does Kermit the Frog. [Link]
LightnetsVia J.D.: Jason Boog at Ziff-Davis' Publish writes about Darknets vs. Lightnets, following on J.D.'s book Darknet : Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation book:
A Darknet is a hidden Web nook where a small group shares digital files. Lightnet refers to a theoretical push towards an Internet where sharing and remixing files is encouraged.
Boog quotes web developer Lucas Gonze, who says "in a Lightnet world, New York Times audio and video will be about as accessible as text. Anybody will be able to e-mail the link to a friend, incorporate the item in a playlist, comment on the item on their own home page, and perhaps make a derived work in the form of a remix, Podcast, or videoblog....Publishers will give away some content in order to be able to sell other content, and they will find new revenue sources when they become remixers themselves." I.e. smart media companies will be thinking outside the pre-digital "intellectual property" box of concepts. The Digital Convergence track we're putting together for SXSW Interactive this year will address this in a couple of panels.
What would Mike Wallace ask George W. Bush?Great quote from Mike Wallace, who can't get an interview with George W., and no wonder. When asked by a Boston Globe reporter what he would ask given the chance, he doesn't pull punches:
What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? In your background, Mr. President, you apparently were incurious. You didn't want to travel. You knew very little about the military. . . . The governor of Texas doesn't have the kind of power that some governors have. . . . Why do you think they nominated you? . . . Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so [expletive] up?[Link] More on CNN, Wikipedia, and Wickedness
My blog post "CNN on Wikipedia and the wicked Internet" drew criticism over a private email list I'm on after I posted it there. The complaint was that I was "making light" of Seigenthaler's issue - that he had been defamed by a scurrilous article posted to Wikipedia – I won't get into the content of the article here, but you can read Seigenthaler's response at USA Today's site.
My post was not about Seigenthaler, but about the CNN article, which decried "the lack of accountability that often comes with articles posted by anonymous people over the Internet," and when on to say that "unlike content included in magazines, books and other traditional media, online material can be submitted by just about anyone, often without having to volunteer any identifying information." I probably read too much into that last sentence, but I read it to mean that the problem is not so much anonymity, but broad participation in the media conversation by non-experts who may sometimes be anonymous, and who post with no editors or fact-checkers to vet the supposed facts. I challenged the assertion that traditional media is inherently more reliable than the Internet, which, taken as a whole, is an aggregation of many voices and perspectives, where the facts may be wrong here and there and there may be no single authoritative voice, but where exposure to a multiplicity of sources may take us closer to the always-elusive truth. I also asserted my respect for journalists and their practices and ethics, because the many voices on the Internet are a balance, but not a replacement for journalistic discipline.
I should have made all that clearer, though the complaint I was hearing was that I "made light" because I noted the irony that an article complaining about anonymity online ran at CNN's site without a byline. That made me laugh, but I clearly wasn't laughing at Seigenthaler, whose complaint was real and deserved the attention it's been getting elsewhere.
Here's part of my response to the email, offered because it says more about my own thinking, fwiw:
I was also rather surprised to hear that Wikipedia had not previously required a login to post or edit an article. I had always assumed that was the case, and I thought in the rare instances that I had added to or updated the site, I was required to log in. On the other hand, I've never assumed that Wikipedia or similar collaborative publications would be considered an authoritative source of information. I've argued that the advantage of the Internet as it's been evolving in the era of social and collaborative systems and the 'blogosphere' is not that it gives us authoritative voices, but that it gives us many perspectives from which to synthesize our sense of what's real.CNN on Wikipedia and the wicked Internet
Certainly "the lack of accountability that often comes with articles posted by anonymous people over the Internet" is something that should be discussed, though I think (as I mentioned to Mark Dery yesterday in a discussion of this same issue) that the answer is not in the suppression of speech but in an educational focus on media literacy and the need for critical skepticism about all sources, including those that claim to be authoritative.
I also believe that the response to bad speech is more speech, and I applaud Mr. Seigenthalers's aggressive contradiction of the false claims about his past and his contstructive criticism of Wikipedia.
CNN's web site has an article about John Seigenthaler's issues with a Wikipedia article's inaccurate statements. The article notes that the false statement was removed and a registration requirement added for posting new articles (though I didn't think that was new). [Link to the article]
According to the article, "The episode demonstrates the lack of accountability that often comes with articles posted by anonymous people over the Internet....Unlike content included in magazines, books and other traditional media, online material can be submitted by just about anyone, often without having to volunteer any identifying information." Ha! CNN's reporter managed to slip in a bit of FUD about the wicked Internet, where anything goes. In one sentence, anonymity is the problem; in the next sentence, it's the lack of editorial authority, the supposed vetting of articles in "traditional media," without regard to anonymity.
I could go on for hours about that one... the implicaiton that "traditional media" is more trustworthy. Think about Fox News, or Judith Miller. Journalists have a code of ethics and a methodology that I respect (I did time in journalism school, so I know how it's supposed to work). However years of experience have taught me that "traditonal" sources are often unreliable. It's better to get your information from many, often conflicting, sources, as you can find online.
What's really funny about this CNN article, though, is that it has no byline. It's anonymous.
Podcast tussle (or hustle?)Another edit tussle at Wikipedia, this time over the history of podcasting. Adam Curry furtively removed a reference to Kevin Marks' role in podcasting's development, but as Kevin notes, he left an audit trail. Curry's site is down. Daniel Terdiman blogs about the fracas at news.com, saying Curry's been "podbusted." Curry says he "wasn't doing anything evil or posting that I had 'done it all. Merely participating in the process of Wikipedia to the best of my knowledge. Apparently that's not cool if you were a part of history." Depends on the changes you make... but we all know that none of these technologies can be credited to any one person, and the guy who does it first isn't necessarily the guy who does it best.
I don't think encapsulation of MP3 in RSS and the additional scripts that allow you to move podcasts automatically into your iTunes or iPod, wonderful as these breakthroughs have been, are the real story, anyway. You can find plenty of "podcasts" online that are really just mp3 files posted without encapsulation. The real news is that podcasting inspired broader understanding of the grassroots media potential of the Internet. (Thanks and a tip o' the hat to Ewan.)
Texan named Harper's editorRoger Hodge, a rancher's son from Del Rio who came up through the ranks at Harper's, will be its new editor when Lewis Lapham steps down in April. [Link]
"We have had many talented people here that have gone on to edit other magazines, and I have thought for a long time that Roger was a keeper and that we should make sure that we hang on to him," [Harper's president and publisher John R.] MacArthur said. "And I like the fact that he is from Texas and a ranching family. He was bred to be independent and self-governed, to think for himself, and I think that is a great credential to edit the magazine."Harryhausen on King Kong
When I was a mere tad, I went through a phase where I wanted to make films. At times I wanted to be a director, but at other times I wanted to do special effects, inspired by Ray Harryhausen, whose art was stop motion animation, which has pretty much been replaced by CGI. Harryhausen learned his art from Willis O'Brien, who had animated King Kong, Son of Kong, and Mighty Joe Young (Harryhausen assisted with the latter). King Kong was the one to beat... O'Brien had put himself into the animation; Kong seemed almost human. Harryhausen made at least one film based on an O'Brien concept, Valley of the Gwangi, but he never attempted a remake of Kong. Now Peter Jackson's created a faithful remake (unlike the 70s version, which was - yawn - okay), and the Guardian's running a piece about Kong that includes an interview with Harryhausen, now retired (and just beginning to get the recognition he deserves).
Blog!I led a discussion with David Kline about his new book, Blog!, on the WELL. David and his co-author, Dan Burstein, interviewed several bloggers in several fields ... primarily politics, business, and media. (David also interviewed me on blogging and activism.) The interview and the book are full of insights about the state and future of blogging, and are a must-read for those who are trying to grasp the depth and breadth of the blogosphere.
Blogs won't change human nature. But to my mind, a world in which millions of people now have voices that can be heard is better than a world in which only the chosen few "experts" or "pundits" or media do.King Kong!
True democracy is messy. And it's true, there's still a lot of narcissistic "talking at" rather than "discussing with" going on. But I liken that to the ego-centric stage that early toddlers go through. Ordinary people -- people who have no special access or reach -- are learning what it means to now have a voice. As we mature and become more confident that what we say is valuable, if only to ourselves and to perhaps a few dozen of our readers, then I really truly believe the "noise" will be pierced by ever-increasing dialogoue and meaning.
Civility comes from confidence and self-assurance that you do, in fact, have the right to speak. Early practitioners of the new social invention of democracy a couple of hundred years ago were not very civil at all. Per capita, there were probably as many nutcases and angry narcissists as there are now. But by the mid-19th century, the average citizen could think of no better form of entertainment and enlightenment than to spend 12 hours listening to a Lincoln-Douglass debate. These were common men and women who attended these events, who eagerly read partisan newspapers, and who lived peacefully with their neighbors who read entirely opposing partisan newspapers.
Does this save the world? Usher in a permanent era of peace? End war?
No. But at least the world increasingly becomes *our* world, a world that reflects the voices and concerns of many millions rather than thousands.
A fan of the original "King Kong," I'm on pins and needles waiting for the Peter Jackson remake of the film, which will release next month. The Guardian's already taken a peek. There's also a high-definition Quicktime trailer here.
It's not news that consumers don't trust media and advertising, but David Kline blogs how corporate America really doesn't get "consumer-generated media."
...the study suggests that most American companies are woefully unprepared for the managerial, marketing, customer relations, and product development challenges of a new business environment in which customers trust bloggers and each other more than they do traditional corporate marketing. Unfortunately, the modern corporation is built on a solidly-hierarchical "push" model in which customers (and their friends) are at the bottom of the totem pole -- mere passive recipients of whatever the company chooses to deliver to them.David's comments are based on an Intelliseek study found here. Long Tail Camp
But that's going to have to change. And the change certainly won't come easily, not to a generation of executives and managers who were never trained to deal directly with customers who can now make or break their businesses.
If you understand "the long tail," you'll get the idea of the Long Tail Camp:
Long-Tail Camp will start on November 11, 2005 at a location of your choosing. Just show up and start talking about the long-tail of whatever. There might not be a lot of people paying attention or even showing up but hey, it’s the long tail, what can you expect? We’re certain that Long-Tail Camp will be a huge success and expect it will be over in about 10-12 years, depending on the exact parameters of the distribution...What is the long tail? Chris Anderson describes it in his Wired article with the example of Rhapsody, RealNetworks' streaming music service.
Chart Rhapsody's monthly statistics and you get a "power law" demand curve that looks much like any record store's, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero - either they don't carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store.Blogging Enterprise
The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.
This is the Long Tail.
You can find everything out there on the Long Tail. There's the back catalog, older albums still fondly remembered by longtime fans or rediscovered by new ones. There are live tracks, B-sides, remixes, even (gasp) covers. There are niches by the thousands, genre within genre within genre: Imagine an entire Tower Records devoted to '80s hair bands or ambient dub. There are foreign bands, once priced out of reach in the Import aisle, and obscure bands on even more obscure labels, many of which don't have the distribution clout to get into Tower at all.
That's a shot of me (on the left) at today's conference on "The Blogging Enterprise" here in Austin. I was on a panel with a blogger/consultant, Brian Oberkirch, and two gentlemen from the mainstream media side of the world, Fred Zipp of the Austin American-Statesman and Hal Straus from the Washington Post. Moderator was Lorraine Branham, Director of the UT School of Journalism.
Want to know what I said? I don't remember – but here's the notes I took along...
Journalism is a profession, a discipline with a body of knowledge, best practices, code of ethics, etc.
Journalism's been part of a mainstream media world where there are many constraints.
I originally studied journalism but chose not to follow that career path, because I was idealistic at the time and wanted to write about “the truth." What I saw then was that most journalists don't get to write what they want to write, and the ones that do work many years for the privilege.
Since then I've also learned that "the truth" is a matter of perspective, and it usually takes exposure to many perspectives to get a sense what's real... and mainstream media can present a very limited perspective.
I've also learned that there are many intelligent people who write well, but were unlikely to take a path that would lead to mainstream publication. This is mainly because of scarcity - those paths were scarce; there was only so much media "real estate" to fill.
In the early 90s, I started writing for zines, even became a print publisher for a while, because the barriers to entry were lowered by the desktop publishing revolution; I could do my own thing without working within the constraints of mainstream media.
Then with the web I could publish online, with even fewer constraints, I just had to learn a few technical tricks to make it happen.
Then, with blog software, after a bit of setup I could publish anything I wanted with very little effort on the publishing side... I could focus on writing, write whatever I wanted, and focus on building an audience.
So this is what we have now: anyone can publish and find an audience. There are few constraints. We've gone from a scarcity of channels to an abundance, and we have a range of activity, from journals and blogs that are read by very few, to large conglomerates of very popular blogs like the Gawker and Weblogs, Inc. systems.
This has a lot of implications I don't have time to go into, but it's clearly a different paradigm, a different world, and it signals a transformation of media.
MurrowXeni's posted some background on Edward R. Murrow and the film Good Night and Good Luck,, which I found via Wendy Seltzer. I'm old enough to remember watching Murrow, though I didn't quite know what was a stake at the time... I figured it out over the years, though, and had the deepest respect for his work and his courage. Studying and thinking about Murrow as I flirted with a career in journalism helped make me a civil libertarian and free speech advocate; not sure where we would be today if he hadn't stepped up, along with John Henry Faulk. We've seen fundamental rights threatened in the US over the past few years; studying the McCarthy era can remind us how bad it can get, and studying Murrow's work can remind us how to take a stand when basic rights are challenged.
Citizen media and a couple of JeffsMarc Canter blogged a pointer to the Open Media Developers' Summit and noted that he and others had been doing pretty much the same thing at ourmedia.org. I was slightly in that conversation and know how much effort they put into it. Marc sez Jeff Kowalski's been keeping the system up "with bubble gum and kite string" – which reminds me that Polycot's got a Jeff that does the same, my partner Jeff Kramer, who's getting married Saturday. We had a bachelor party for Jeff last weekend where he had his first-ever tequila shots:
Yahoo and the Internet Archive are building the Open Content Alliance along with several other contributors "will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content." Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle says
The opportunity before all of us is living up to the dream of the Library of Alexandria and then taking it a step further-- Universal access to all knowledge. Interestingly, it is now technically doable. Then the question became-- is it in the interest of enough people and institutions to get there? Some hang-ups have been around costs, rights, and guidelines for sharing. All of these things were worked out for their domains by Internet folks and open source folks in the last few decades. But how are we going build a system that has everything available to everyone?
Hence the Open Content Alliance, where "our guiding principle is to offer high-resolution, downloadable, reusable files of the public domain." Brewster goes on to discuss copyright issues and potential resolution via Creative Commons licenses.
Technorati Tags: opencontentalliance, media
Blogging and PR
Dan Lowden, Robert Durand, Dara Quackenbush
Dara Quackenbush invited me down to speak to a Public Relations class at Texas State University yesterday, as part of a panel with Dan Lowden from Wayport and Robert Durand from Edelman - guys who do marketing and PR, respectively, and who have a clue about blogging, which was the subject of our discussion. In my presentation I covered the power law distribution of blogs and the significance of the long tail, aggregate influence, how journalists work with bloggers, etc. The class seemed receptive, and they were quick to swarm Robert after the discussion to find out about Edelman internships.
The American Society of Magazine Editors has selected the top 40 magazine covers for the last 40 years. Interesting set. Number 1 choice: the Rolling Stone cover featuring John and Yoko.
Remember Community Access television? Think Wayne's World. Access television was home to all kinds of low budget, quirky content put together by pretty much anybody with a will to work through whatever training and bureaucracy was required. If you give people access to the airwaves and lower your expectations about quality of presentation, you could find occasional gems on the access channels.
With lower barriers to entry, better production technology, and potential millions of channels for delivery along with searches and filters, you might find thousands of gems, delivered at no cost to your computer, then possibly to your home theatre. "Consumer is producer" - the John Gulagers of this world won't need a greenlight to make and distribute their creations.
That's one vision, anyway - Open Source Media. I happened onto some people from the Berkman Center discussing this in a chat backchannel for a virtual meeting, and one of 'em blogged about it... a lunchtime talk about Digital Bicycle.
Google VideoGoogle Video is interesting... I didn't find much compelling content via random search, but I could imagine using it at some point. Put television shows online for viewing on demand, for instance, and you get another instance of time shifting (similar to Tivo and others DVRs) which could mean a 'longer tail' for television programming that might otherwise fade away. I'm waiting for someone smart with a lot of server power to put the jillions of television programs from the "golden age" online, including shows that did well critically but died after half a season (there's a few of those I wouldn't mind checking out.)
DHS - the (cough cough) series!Xeni at boingboing.net is having a field day here and here with Joseph Medawar's proposed television fantasy D.H.S. - The Series, quoting a BBC article saying that Medawar has been charged with bilking investors, taking money for series development and spending it on himself. Medawar claimed he had President Bush's backing. I found an NPR Interview by Brooke Gladstone with Medwar and his co-producer, Alison Heruth-Waterbury (also a series co-star) from March 2004:
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now you'll remember that the creation of the Homeland Security Department was not without its share of debate, and one year later there continues to be real questions raised about its overall effectiveness. Are you at all concerned that the unvarnished heroes of the plotlines in your shows will eclipse the very legitimate real life concerns about the DHS?Photo ideal
ALISON HERUTH-WATERBURY: You know what, DHS is, you know, from our point of view, is very strong for us in the U.S. We need it. Is it perfected to where we want it to be? I think there's always room for improvement in every area. But it's not a show about promoting the government. It's about educating--
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But don't you think the education value is somewhat impaired if you don't show any of the warts?
ALISON HERUTH-WATERBURY:Yes, of course those need to be displayed and shown, so you can learn from 'em. I cannot judge, and I wouldn't even want to say publicly where I feel their weak areas are, because there's very few people that are there, I believe, for the wrong reason. Now whether they are right or wrong, again, is a perception. But they have to believe in what they're doing.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:You know, it's not inconsistent to recognize the heroism of participants in an agency and yet raise questions about the efficiency of an agency. The trailer that you posted on your website, if it's any indication of the overall flavor of your series -- we see an almost invariably effective endeavor, and the power of fiction might lead viewers to think that that is the way the Homeland Security Department operates when in fact there are some very real problems that if the public were aware of they might help to address.
ALISON HERUTH-WATERBURY: We have every intention of bringing those things to the air. You've merely seen a two to three minute trailer, and you don't have our story line and, you know, that is changing every day.
Joel Sternfeld's new photo exhibit, "Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America," is a series of photos from the sites of utopian communities throughout the U.S.
In 1982, while Mr. Sternfeld was still working on "American Prospects," he visited a socialist thinker, Scott Nearing, then 99, in Maine. Looking through Mr. Sternfeld's images for that series, Mr. Nearing advised that they were too critical of America. "Picture an ideal world and photograph that," he told the photographer. Mr. Sternfeld evidently took his advice, capturing in this body of work if not an ideal world, at least the idea of it.I'd like to see this exhibit, having focused on the less-than-ideal recently. (It would be interesting to see a combined show featuring Sternfeld's work with Ed Burtynsky's.) About narrative
Writing "only looks easy." Chip Scanlan interviews the Chicago Tribune's Kevin Pang about the narrative structure of a recent story. Pang's only 24, but he's definitely got a handle on this writing thing. [Link]
Alan BallAlan Ball's HBO series Six Feet Under is powerful and mysterious as life itself, and so difficult that I found myself complaining that I must be a masochist to be watching the final season of the series (which ends Sunday). A couple of episodes ago Nate, the lead character, died, and everybody else in the series is falling apart - major tragedy. But life is like that, and Six Feed Under is all about life's inexpicable leaps from comedy to tragedy and (sometimes) back again, and our attempts to throw a saddle that isn't real on a horse that doesn't exist. Somewhere in all that, there are unmistakable threads of wisdom. The Buddhist journal Tricycle once interviewed Ball about the parallels between his work and Buddhism (though he's not a Buddhist, just a Buddha). Now Salon's published an excellent interview explaining some of the thinking – and searching – that's gone into the series.
I'm not interested in writing characters who figure it out, and get it right, because I feel like that's too simplistic, and then you're writing about something that vaguely resembles life instead of writing about life. Because even if you figure out something, something bigger is going to come along that confuses the hell out of you. And for characters who are soulful and have a soulful connection to life ... One of the enduring themes of the series is that trying to figure out the right thing to do is such a mystery, it's so baffling. So many times when you do the quote right unquote thing, it makes your life harder, and you don't get rewarded for it. Then you get into the whole question of what is right and wrong. Is there a black-and-white universal right and wrong, or is there what's right for you, or is there what's right for people you love, or is there what's right for the global community? Life is infinitely complex and I feel like we live in a culture that really seems to want to simplify it into sound bites and bromides, and that does not workComing soon: a podcast on convergence
Wednesday we recorded the first Balcones Fault Line Report, a talk show that Stephen Dulaney of Austin Podcasting Networkand I conceived. Our regular panel, besides Stephen and I, will include Catherine Crago and David Nuñez (who missed this first recording). Our first guess, Dr. Alex Cavalli, talked about the Digital Convergence Initiative that he's instigated. The two hour conversation will probably be podcast in two or three parts... watch this space, I'll post something when it's online. Meanwhile, if you're in Central Texas and care about Digital Convergence, be sure to attend the DCI Conference on September 22. (Register here.)
Darknet
JD Lasica's Darknet is a very good overview of the tumultous evolution of the perception of content and distribution as all media is digitized and increasingly available online, sometimes through legal channels but more often via the Darknet, i.e. file sharing networks of trust (not to be confused with the euphemistic label trusted computing). I'm leading a discussion with JD at Inkwell.vue on the WELL. If you want to join the conversation, you can send questions and comments to inkwell (at) well.com.
The Darknet, at bottom, is the collection of spaces where unauthorized or illegal file sharing takes place. Most media outlets use the Darknet in the narrow sense to refer to the private, secure, encrypted spaces online set up to exchange files without fear of detection -- sites like Blubster and WASTE and the new initiative Ian Clarke announced 2 weeks ago that will expand darknets from small groups of a few dozen people to potentially millions of people.Newsweek's sloppy editing
My book deals with these kinds of darknets, but also points out that Darknets in a wider sense refer to any kind of illicit file-sharing network -- including the years-old sneakernets on college campuses, where kids trade, buy and sell CDs and DVDs of movies and software downloaded from warez sites and the Internet; Usenet and IRC Chat, where strangers exchange files; and a new wave of legitimate darknet companies like Grouper and imeem and Outhink's Spin Xpress (which I'll bet most of you haven't heard of!).
Darknets are not evil -- at least in my book. They're the public's reaction to overly restrictive copyright laws and bass-ackwards media business models. In some ways, darknets are becoming the last bastion of the digital freedom fighters (alongside the folks who just want to snag free stuff). So it's a decidedly mixed bag.
Rebecca MacKinnon reports how Newsweek screwed up her background information in an introduction to an interview with her about censorship in China. I don't think it's just Newsweek, though... I don't think I've ever given an interview or been close to a story that was handled with complete accuracy. Rebecca notes that "even if their reporters are hard-working, well-intentioned and trying their best, you can count on their editors to mangle the details and have no respect for interviewees - without whom they would have no stories." [Link]
"The Internet" inspires terrorist violence?!Just overheard on CNN: Nic Robertson in London told Miles O'Brien that, despite reasonableness of Muslim communities in the UK and elsewhere, the problem is the Internet - young Muslims can be inspired to commit terrorist acts of violence by radical Muslim web sites. O'Brien responded that this is something that "we have to do something about." I guess we're all relieved to know that we can end attacks by suicide bombers if we just do away with that pesky Internet.
"Fighting a Broadband Battle"New FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to increase access to high-speed (broadband) Internet, and he's okay with municipal networks. However he doesn't want to force phone and cable companies to share their networks (in effect creating a duopoly) because he thinks this removes an incentive to extend service. This Wall Street Journal piece is a good overview of current conflicting ideas about broadband delivery. [Link]
Avatar vs JournalistRohit Gupta questions whether participatory journalism is a good idea (and includes some interesting thoughts about Wikipedia, the Bhagwad Gita, and myth-making). [Link]
When decorum fails, one is likely to see "forest fires" and "edit wars" in Wikipedia, akin to riots in a city. On a peaceful day, though, one might wonder how neutrality is made manifest in Wikipedia. In fact, is it even possible to have an article that is completely unbiased, whether in Wikipedia or in a newspaper? An explanation for this is the concept of "systemic bias" or the sum of prejudices inherently present and active in the human group we are dealing with. As the community grows and awareness about the bias spreads, it is hoped that the articles, by assimilating as many point of views as possible, will become increasingly objective.Joi on the air (literally)
This idea is dangerous, in that it undermines the work of an excellent, dedicated journalist coming up with a very objective report. It is dangerous to assume that the language of crowds can be so easily deciphered, or that location/access is the only important criterion for credibility. Wikipedia is a populist history of the world, a myth, a history in consensus. However, the fact that it can be changed makes it more reliable than Encarta or Brittannica.
It appears that the newspaper is making its second mistake after going capitalist going populist. The shift of certain traditional mass media towards participatory journalism is not guided by altruist ideas, or survival, but by the opportunity of cutting costs involved in traditional journalism. It is motivated by the possibility that the traditional reporter can be replaced by a zero-cost mob reporting several points of view, even eyewitness reports. This removes the need to hire a dedicated journalist, the seeker of truth, and replaces him (or her) with a murmur of crowds.
Joi Ito experimented with an in-flight podcast using Audio Hijack Pro, Skype and the Boeing Connexion service on Lufthansa flight 711. I'm waiting for a flight-to-flight experiment! [Link]
Rupert Murdoch invades MySpaceRupert Murdoch is acquiring Intermix Media, Inc., which operates MySpace.com, for $580 million in cash, dragging the social network site into his media empire (which includes everybody's favorite "fair and balanced" news network, Fox News. The UK's Guardian Unlimited has a pretty good assessment of Murdoch's attempt to embrace "the internet and the peer-to-peer communications which power its current growth."
There is something of a backside-covering operation here with the purchase of internet advertising growth via the Intermix websites as well as an acquisition of a new skill set. But herein lies the problem. All of the truly successful web businesses which Murdoch seeks to emulate - at least in terms of revenues and reach - Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, MSN - do not have pioneering vision bolted on to them but embedded in the heart of their corporate culture. The mess of AOL and Time Warner has proved one thing - that integrating online and offline can take a decade, millions of dollars, and still leave you with two distinct businesses that have barely budged an inch.Worldchanging Producer Needed!
A self-confessed "digital immigrant", Rupert Murdoch might have finally run into a boundary which he cannot transcend. His vision for News Corp on the web, which in America means Fox Interactive Media, has undertones of portals and keeping your audience tied in - something which is a long way behind the latest curve, where content flies freely across whichever platform the users choose. To be successful on the web takes more than acquisitive power - like all other media it takes total commitment and concentration from the very top of the company and a culture steeped in its progression. Murdoch should note the reverse takeover going on at the BBC where its online business is moving from the periphery to the core of all its activities.
WorldChanging.com (where I'm a more or less regular contributor) is looking for a Producer/Cat-herder. The job's based in Seattle. This is a pretty great gig for an organizer who's fired up about global approaches to sustainability, environmental sanity, ethical technology, and borderless networking. [Link]
All over the musical mapA couple of things I learned today that are at different latitudes on the musical map...
My pal Stephen Dulaney creator of and lead evangelist with the Austin Podcasting Network, had blogged a link to the Biddycast, a podcast by The Lascivious Biddies, who captured my ear with a live spot on Austin's KUT during SXSW (I was driving around the block at the time and hoping David would take his time filing EFF-Austin's incorporation so I could keep listening. Now I can lisent whenever and wherever.
Another pal, Ed Ward, did his Fresh Air gig today on the Rocka nd Roll Trio featuring Johnny and Dorsey Burnette as well as Paul Burlison. I thought I knew a thing or two about rock and roll, but I never knew the Burnettes were brothers or that they had this incredible rockabilly band (I think Ed said they coined the term rockabilly)... so I clearly have to do some research. Follow that Burlison link and you'll get a dose of "Train Kept A-Rolling," a old favorite of mine. Burlison tore it up.
ourmediaourmedia, an "open media" project instigated by Marc Canter and JD Lasica, launched an alpha web site; it's looking pretty good. [Link] From the FAQ:
The idea is pretty simple: People who create video, music, photos, audio clips and other personal media can store their stuff for free on Ourmedia's servers forever, as long as they're willing to share their works with a global audience.Spotcast!Ourmedia's goal is to expose, advance and preserve digital creativity at the grassroots level. The site serves as a central gathering spot where professionals and amateurs come together to share works, offer tips and tutorials, and interact in a combination community space and virtual library that will preserve these works for future generations. We want to enable people anywhere in the world to tap into this rich repository of media and create image albums, movie and music jukeboxes and more.
Tim Jones of EchoDitto caught Jock Gill and I for a SpotCast... [Link]
Podcasting for Profit
Evan Williams and others are working on Odeo, a company that "aims to enable this new distribution channel and medium by creating the best one-source solution for finding, subscribing to, and publishing audio content," according to Evan. "It's about personal media, time-shifting, and the long, long tail." Ev has, of course, created an Odeo blog, and Markoff in The NY Times rants how podcasting, with Odeo, is taking a step " toward becoming the commercial Web's next big thing." Markoff talks about various commercial podcasting products, and says that "plans to make money by selling audio content and advertising and, eventually, software for producing and editing podcasts."
This is all very cool, but you know what they say: don't look a gift economy in the mouth.
Pod People
Podcasting kicks in: there's over 800 regular podcasts, and counting. ABC News has an overview (aka mainstreaming) here. Thinking about potential applications: Stephen Dulaney and I talked about the role of podcasting in open government earlier this week, and I've thought about adding podcasts to some of the blogs I host, if I can make myself take the time to do the work (probably unlikely in my current maxed-out state). I expect Polycot to have clients that want podcasting any day now.
Legal Aid for Bloggers Jason Kottke's being hassled by attorneys for Sony over his posting about Ken Jennings' loss on Jeopardy, including a video clip from the program. The legal hassle and resulting expense may knock Kottke offline. Jeff Jarvis suggests that we need a Bloggers' Legal Defense Society, and Britt expands on that idea, and offers suggestionsKevin Sites on the shooting in the Mosque
- If called by a lawyer, calm your mind and lower your pulse.
- Ask politely that they put it in writing.
- Take the letter to your city or county's Public Recorder's Office.
- File it for the public record for a small fee.
(you may enter anything into the public record, even a movie stub).- Scan the letter and post it online as a GIF and a PDF.
- List the official record number.
- Let us do the rest.
None of this is fair to the lawyers who do this because they're only doing their job. Tough noogies. In every transition of power, force is projected by the rising elite against the old, and careers and reputations are lost and individuals are hurt. It is the way of nature. The question is, are we bloggers willing to discover and expose the words and identities of the individuals, having no fear of retribution, who threaten our friend Jason? We're certainly willing to track down every other detail that interests us, why not when one of us is attacked?
The exercise of real power is never fair. In the last year there's been a shift of power to citizen journalists who simply examine the public record and report what we've learned. We must rise up now that they have come for Jason, for they will surely come for us next.
Kevin Sites, reporting for NBC in Falluja, shot the now widely-reported video of an American soldier shooting a wounded insurgent in a Mosque. Also a blogger, Sites has posted his poignant account of the incident and his own internal struggles to determine the right course of action. His post is an open letter to the Devil Dogs of the 3.1, the Marines involved in the incident. (Via Xeni at boing boing.) [Link]
In war, as in life, there are plenty of opportunities to see the full spectrum of good and evil that people are capable of. As journalists, it is our job is to report both -- though neither may be fully representative of those people on whom we're reporting. For example, acts of selfless heroism are likely to be as unique to a group as the darker deeds. But our coverage of these unique events, combined with the larger perspective - will allow the truth of that situation, in all of its complexities, to begin to emerge. That doesn't make the decision to report events like this one any easier. It has, for me, led to an agonizing struggle -- the proverbial long, dark night of the soul.Bill O'Reilly is a weird guyI knew NBC would be responsible with the footage. But there were complications. We were part of a video "pool" in Falluja, and that obligated us to share all of our footage with other networks. I had no idea how our other "pool" partners might use the footage. I considered not feeding the tape to the pool -- or even, for a moment, destroying it. But that thought created the same pit in my stomach that witnessing the shooting had. It felt wrong. Hiding this wouldn't make it go away. There were other people in that room. What happened in that mosque would eventually come out. I would be faced with the fact that I had betrayed truth as well as a life supposedly spent in pursuit of it.
Andrea Mackris is suing Fox news journalist personality Bill O'Reilly citing repeated instances of sexual harassment. The complaint is pretty interesting. In includes references to O'Reilly's "paranoid rambling." He also likes phone sex. No wonder he's so tense. [Link]
Dan Gillmor, columnist at the Mercury and one of the first journalists to maintain a weblog, is discussing his new book We the Media on the WELL, with Christian Crumlish, author of The Power of Many, leading the discussion. You can read the discussion here, and you can send comments/questions to inkwell-hosts at well.com.
One inkling of media changes is in the book. In the mid-1980s I was
an avid user of XyWrite, the great DOS word processing program. It had
an internal programming language that could do everything but boil
water for tea. I was puzzled by a small XyWrite programming problem one
day and posted a note on a CompuServe forum asking if anyone could
help me solve it. I came back a day or so later and found several great
replies, including (if memory serves) Australia. That was the first
day I truly got how the power at the edges of networks can serve us
all. Bush Blowout? (Updated 9/17/04)This is weird: I look at the Drudge Report, and I see a headline screaming GALLUP SHOWS BUSH BLOWOUT: 14 POINT LEAD OVER KERRY. Then I go to the Gallup site, and I can find no evidence of this 14 point lead. Is Drudge just making stuff up?
Update: National Business Review has a piece with a link to the Gallup poll Drudge mentioned, which says that Bush leads Kerry by 13 points among likely voters; 8 points among registered voters.
RESFEST 2004The RESFEST Digital Film Festival is coming to Austin October 8 (Alamo Drafthouse Cinema). RESFEST will be coming to 33 cities in 13 countries with short films, music videos, motion design, live music, speakers, etc. This year there's a special shorts program called Bushwhacked!, and you can guess the focus. (Thanks to John Worthington for the pointer!)
A case of libel?Scotland's Sunday Herald made an apology and paid damages for a comment a reader made in its online forum. Nato secretary general George Robertson's damage award for a false allegation may also have the affect of stifling newspaper discussion forums; it implies that forums should be held to the same level of editorial control and fact-checking as other content areas at a newspaper site. This will doubtless have a chilling effect on informal conversation about news, at least on sites that are connected to sites published by news organizations. [Link]
Lord Robertson's lawyer, Cameron Dean, warned that the case highlighted the danger of "operating a website without being fully aware of the legal risks and responsibilities".Open-Media.orgBut media law expert Mark Stephens, of law firm Finers Stephens Innocent, said the courts had to recognise that message boards were not read in the same way as newspaper websites.
"Readers understand that bulletin boards are not reliable sources of information. Just as you wouldn't treat a copy of the Beano in the same way as a serious scientific journal, so in the modern era you have to realise that bulletin boards are not always scrupulously accurate," he said.
Got a note from J.D. Lasica about The Open Source Media Project, with a pointer to Marc Canter's notes on implementation:
First we'll start off with upload sites - which will enable folks to start getting their stuff into the 'archives'. Then we'll provide Jukeboxes and Image Albums (much like what's in the gutter of my blog) that have built into them these huge repositories.Exciting stuff – pretty soon you won't have time for television and radio because you'll be making your own! Hiroshima and the MediaBascially we're making sure to make it REAL easy for folks to utilize media in their everyday lives, school and work.
Portland IndyMedia has an interesting analysis of the media's role in misleading the American public about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Probably no surprises for anyone who's studied the relevant history and given it some thought, but timely given the role of media in selling the Iraq war. Complex issues here worth debating – I know there can be compelling arguments for secrecy and disinformation in certain contexts. It would be worthwhile to debate whether and when it's appropriate to mislead, what the public's role (if any) should be with regard to life or death military decisions. Remember Colonel Jessep in A Few Good Men? You can't have democracy if you don't trust the public's ability to handle the truth, though the IndyMedia site acknowledges that the government and military will be secretive. However
the press claims to be objective, factual, and free. Far from being independent, though, the corporate media acted as the government's agent in furthering the official narrative, attempted to squash any dissenting facts, and questioned the 'patriotism' of those who raised concerns. This complicity has continued to the present day, not just with the story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but with many subjects, especially war. Parallels with contemporary corporate coverage of the current "war on terrorism" are easy to find.[Link] Flag-Draped Coffins
Kenneth Irby in Poynter Online tells how Tami Silicio's photo of flag-draped coffins of Iraqi war dead came to be published, thanks to the efforts of Silicio's friend Amy Katz and Seattle Times picture editor Barry Fitzsimmons.The Bush administration asserts that there should be no media-related photographic documentation (news footage or still photography) of the homecoming of the war dead. This policy was implemented ostensibly to protect the sensitivities of military stakeholders: families, friends, and fellow soldiers.Of course, one reason for suppressing the photos might be to sanitize the war news. Public support for the war might erode if the human cost was more apparent. [Link] Gatekeepers No More? The Grassroots Challenges the Journalist PriesthoodJeff Cohen, editor of The Houston Chronicle, sees it a little differently. He disagrees with the ban, saying "I believe there should be a free flow of information between the government and the media. The government can't dictate what you can and cannot publish. The newspaper has to look at every story and print what it feels is necessary for public examination."
"We went to war with Saddam Hussein because he was a ruthless dictator who denied his people of their freedoms and (the) liberties of a free society," he says. "We have to be very careful that our government does not do the same thing."
More notes from O'Reilly's Digital Democracy Teach-iin. I apologize - sketchy notes of a very good panel.
Jay Rosen talks about conversion from public to audience. This is starting to come apart now. Dick Morris said the Internet has done one thing radical, it has given the public a mouth.
Jeff Jarvis:
Now everyone has a printing press and the audience has a voice. Everyone is a reader and everyone is a writer. Importance of listening to the people.
What should happen:
Meetings in our towns should all be webcast. No reason not to.
Insist and expect that politicians have weblogs or equivalent.
Insist that political orgs have citizen-friendly web presences.
We should expect public officials to enter into a dialog with us.
Expect journalists to report, not just repeat.
The day of one-size-fits-all journalism are over.
Jay:
Media and the press should be seen as different. Press is an important institution; should sustain its authority.
John McCarthy asks about connection between press feedback and campaign technology. Jeff mentions that a blog is just a tool one guy in Canada posted how to blog in Persian, now theres a bushel of Persian weblogs that may be part of a revolution.
Jay: problem that journalists stopped caring whether people were becoming engaged, and focused only on information delivery, not en
gagement.
Bopnews.com is about blogging of the president, 2004. Chris Lydon creates audio interviews that are unlimited in length. An interview is a very democratic instrument.
Ebayization of politics? Jay: its not just that people can get information without going to traditional media. Its the different perspectives / diversities of perspectives. Its that bloggers are doing it for love, and that is an advantage that they have. Love of whats right, of participation, of their community, etc. Thats a very powerful thing.
Amateurs are a threat not because they are going to take over a franchise, but because they have such different motivations for what theyre doing. The root of the word amateur is lover.
Q from Tim Bishop. Is it harder to explain technology to politics or politics to technologists? What are the imperatives that push the mass media toward infotainment (if I understood the question correctly).
Dan respects mass media, and is part of it.
Jay says journalists dont exactly know what their future is; the space where they can practice their craft is squeezed by potential withdrawal of investment in journalism. People arent making distinction between the craft of journalism and big media, which is actually as much a threat to professional journalists. The authority system journalists had of representing the public with the insiders is coming apart. Now journalists are seen as insiders themselvese, and this has worn away at their authority. Some journalists are hip, and are trying to figure out how to find a form of authority that is more interactive.
(I was distracted, but Jeff J. just mentioned that Big Media cant coopt blogsand referred to big media that doesnt coopt, but cooperates.)
Q: What does digital democracy look like? Whats the role of portals?
Jay: what does a democratic culture look like, is the question, and what is the role of technology in that. What can digital technology do for us in creating a democratic culture is a better question.
UnbelievableWolf Blitzer, discussing the self-reinforcing character of political polls and reportage, made a comment that had me chuckling. I wonder if he heard himself? The comment: "What we report almost has a tendency to be believed by people."
