DECEMBER 16, 2008

I love books, but due to some work and general life craziness, I’ve been unable to read much for the past few weeks. Luckily, things have slowed down enough that I was able to finally sit down and finish a book I started a month or two ago - Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children, a novel about an aging liberal patriarch, a veteran of the culture wars of the 60s, and his relationship with the younger generation, comprised of his daughter, his nephew and his daughter’s two friends.

I’m ashamed to say I picked up the book because of its inclusion in several critics’ Best of 2006 awards. I don’t read a lot of fiction and not many of my friends do either, so when it comes to figuring out what I should read next, I generally have to rely on the Pulitzer committee or the New York Times’ Review of Books. I figured The Emperor’s Children was a safe purchase because of its critical acclaim.

Was I ever wrong. Undercurrents isn’t a book review site, but suffice it to say that the critics’ perception of this book didn’t match my own. I thought the dialogue was hackneyed and impossibly witty, that many of the central premises of the book were outlandish,  and the characters unbelievable. The constant refrain running through my head as I read was “People like this do not exist, and if they do, they do not deserve to have a book written about them.”

After finishing the book, I blamed my own upbringing for my lack of appreciation - I’m a hayseed from Richmond, Virginia and a current resident of staid and practical Washington, not the child of Manhattan literary eminences -  but upon reading reviews at Amazon and Metacritic, I quickly discovered that my opinion about The Emperor’s Children wasn’t unique. At Amazon, the most commonly-used tags for the book are “waste of time and money”, “avoid”, and “awful”, the most common rating for the book is one star, and the average rating is a mere two and a half. At Metacritic, the aggregate rating from professional critics is 85 (denoting “universal acclaim”) while the rating from readers is 69. Whichever way you slice it, reader reactions to this book were a far cry from those of elite reviewers of literature.

Reading these reviews, my insecurity over not “getting” The Emperor’s Children quickly melted into triumphalism - I was right, and the professionals were wrong. I mean, it’s not surprising the book was reviewed so well - it’s basically about the same New York literary-journalism class that reviewed the book, and paints it in a very appealing light. But it’s nice to know that that small clique isn’t capable of driving public opinion about books like they once did.

This particular book aside, it’s incredible how much power social media has had in debunking the ideas of “professionals”.  As print media continues to die, the blogosphere has eroded the opinion-setting power of all kinds of pundits, from art and literature critics in New York, to political talking heads in Washington - and one can only hope that the unwashed masses on the internet continue to prove that the emperor has no clothes.

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NOVEMBER 12, 2008

The last time I really picked up a newspaper was in August 2007. That was when I used several bundles of newspapers to wrap my colleague Neal’s cubicle in what stands to be the greatest TMG birthday prank on record. I obviously don’t read the paper. And, based on the latest numbers on newspaper circulation, I’m not alone. I don’t consider myself an uninformed person- I just get my news from television and the internet- the two biggest competitors to newspapers.

However, last Wednesday was different, and not just for me. People all across the country raced to get the daily paper, especially those sporting front page headlines about Barack Obama’s victory.

So does this mean that print is back? Of course not. Joe Strupp over at Editor & Publisher agrees:

…a lot more people will have a lot more newspapers to look back through some day and remember when. Remember not only when voters first elected a black president, but also when the daily paper was still around.

People weren’t buying the paper last week as a source of news- they were grabbing copies as a memento, a keepsake, a piece of history. You can’t frame a website or video story. In this way, papers have seemingly been reduced to the same category as concert ticket stubs or the program from a baseball game. In my opinion, newspapers will continue to serve a purpose, but more as an artifact of time than a physical representation of our current times.

I bought into the frenzy, too: I stopped by the local 7/11 and bought four copies of The Washington Post. I’m going to send the copies to my parents and siblings. History was made on November 4th and I want to hold onto a little piece of it. So for the first time in a long time, I’m thankful for the newspaper.

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OCTOBER 30, 2008

Back in April, my colleague Mike wrote a post entitled “The Long Goodbye To Newsprint Begins” in which he detailed the final changeover from print to online format for Madison, Wisconsin’s The Capital Times:

The Capital Times may be among the first to step so emphatically into journalism’s future, but every entity of the Old Media – not just newspapers, but TV, magazines and even newsletters and academic journals – has had to face the fact that the digital age has transformed the rules of mass communications.

And while it’s true that every aspect of traditional media is facing a paradigm shift, it seems that print media is taking the worst beating, at least for the moment.

• Condé Nast, an international publisher with numerous publications (many of them household names like Wired, Vogue, Glamour and GQ) announced major cuts across the board, with each title having to reduce staff and budget costs by 5% over a matter of weeks.

• The Orange County Register is laying off 110 employees by the end of the week.

• The Los Angeles Times is cutting 75 newsroom jobs, which is about 10% of its staff.

• Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., is also cutting 10% of its community newspaper staff, on top of 1,000 jobs it let go in August. (Because of Gannett’s size, this will be a very substantial number of jobs.)

• And next year, the 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor will become the first nationally circulated newspaper to go to an online-only daily edition. (CSM will retain a weekly print edition.)

No doubt the economy plays a role here (particularly when the only printing press seeing an increase in demand seems to be the one at the Treasury Department) but it’s also indicative of the rapid convergence of social and traditional media. As we increasingly exchange information electronically, print newspapers - and to a lesser extent magazines and books - become a seeming anachronism. When content I can find in a print edtion of a newspaper is also available online, I will opt for the electronic version every time.

As exciting as the changes are in the way we consume and distribute information, the loss of jobs is unfortunate and has a tremendous impact on the people in the industry.  The question now is whether the decline of print media continues to accelerate, or holds firm. My guess is that 2009 will bring a number of similar announcements to the one made by the Christian Science Monitor.

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SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Some interesting news flashed across my Google Reader screen this morning: SpinSpotter, a Firefox add-on that uses a series of algorithms to detect “spin” in news stories, has gone live.

According to the BusinessWeek article, SpinSpotter’s basic features include functionality to detect and flag violations of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics.  In addition to that, the program will rely heavily on input from its users, who can flag specific instances of bias and spin that may not be detectable by the program. Those individual flags will be incorporated back into the program itself, so it has the capability to adapt to new kinds of spin.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to check out the program for myself, but reading the interview with company officials, a few red flags pop out at me. First, there’s an assumption that media bias is a two-sided affair - that if there’s bias, it’s against Republicans or Democrats - when in reality, American political opinion is much more multifaceted than the old left-right continuum would suggest.

My other issue, though, is a little more substantive. I believe strongly in the power of an adversarial press - where people, reporters, and companies with different opinions can contribute their points of view. Certainly there must be ground rules, and if a journalist is merely repeating the talking points of a political party then he or she deserves to be ignored. But part of the marketplace of ideas is a vibrant press, filled with different points of view, that allows readers to decide what’s relevant and what’s not.

An adversarial press relies on diversity of outlets - something that has been in short supply over the past 50 years, when most cities have only one daily paper and three television stations to supply the news. But the internet and social media have changed that by allowing the kind of diversity of opinion in the press that existed before the big media conglomerates. To gut that diversity by using an automated spin remover seems to me to be missing the point of social media entirely - that it’s supposed to be about individual opinions.

Beyond that, there’s very little evidence to suggest that Americans are interested in bias-free news. For instance, a Rasmussen poll shows that 87% of Fox News viewers plan to vote for John McCain in the upcoming elections, while Barack Obama holds smaller majorities of CNN and MSNBC viewers. It’s clear that in this case, we’re selecting the media outlets that we think best fit our views. It’s no different in newspaper-land: conservatives here in DC read the Times, everyone else reads the Post. 

While SpinSpotter’s efforts are certainly noble, ultimately I think it’s a lost cause. Even if we were interested in reading non-biased news, the nature of bias is so complicated that it seems impossible to truly remove it.

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SEPTEMBER 9, 2008

The battle of electrons vs. dead trees continues to wage on.

First, there was the e-book reader, of which perhaps the Amazon Kindle is the most famous variety.  While some reports indicate that the Kindle is doing quite well, I have to say that in the past two years I’ve spent riding public transit here in D.C., I’ve seen only one of them. It’s my guess, even as a 30-year-old guy whose information consumption habits skew heavily toward online, that people just like the ease, convenience, cost and even feel of a good old-fashioned book.

But despite the challenges of getting e-book technology to be adopted en masse, The New York Times reported this week that Plastic Logic, an international company whose website brands the organization as a “World Leader in Plastic Electronics”,  revealed the technology for a new, electronic newspaper reader.

According to the Times:

The electronic newspaper, a large portable screen that is constantly updated with the latest news, has been a prop in science fiction for ages. It also figures in the dreams of newspaper publishers struggling with rising production and delivery costs, lower circulation and decreased ad revenue from their paper product.

While the dream device remains on the drawing board, Plastic Logic will introduce publicly on Monday its version of an electronic newspaper reader: a lightweight plastic screen that mimics the look — but not the feel — of a printed newspaper.

The device, which is unnamed, uses the same technology as the Sony eReader and Amazon.com’s Kindle, a highly legible black-and-white display developed by the E Ink Corporation. While both of those devices are intended primarily as book readers, Plastic Logic’s device, which will be shown at an emerging technology trade show in San Diego, has a screen more than twice as large. The size of a piece of copier paper, it can be continually updated via a wireless link, and can store and display hundreds of pages of newspapers, books and documents.

Personally, I think a device of this nature has the potential to take off for exactly the reasons that the Kindle, at least initially, hasn’t. When I’m on the go, the last thing I want to do is read a big, bulky newspaper (usually with inserts falling out) while I stand packed into a crowded train. Something sleek, easy to read, and durable would be a big advantage over my current attempts to read news on my Treo. I already read most of my news electronically - something I don’t do or even want to do with full-length books - so for me, this is actually an upgrade on my existing options. If I were able to personalize my device by drawing from multiple news sources and subscribing to feeds, all the better.

What about you? Do you have an e-book reader? If not, would you want an e-newspaper reader?

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SEPTEMBER 3, 2008

Because someone in my office gave birth to a healthy baby boy early yesterday morning, and another one of my colleagues is about to become a new mom later this month, and also in honor of “Labor” Day, I thought it would be appropriate to blog about the crazy Hollywood obsession with getting the very first pictures of newly famous newborns with their famous parents.

People and OK! magazines are usually the first to release full-page spreads of sleeping babies cradled by their proud parents… and thousands of people flock to the newsstands to take a look at the tiny people.  The pictures (and the rights to the pictures) are purchased with very hefty price tags.  This raises a question of ethics.

USA Today featured a story called “The High Cost of Celeb-Baby Fever” in August that focuses on the topic of ethics in the sale and release of baby photos.  The article makes mention of the recent record-breaking $14 million deal between Hello!, a magazine based in Britain that purchased international rights to a 19-page “family album” of pictures of the Jolie-Pitt twins– Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Leon.  Before this deal, the most that was reportedly paid for celebrity baby pictures was $6 million, to Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony after the birth of their twins.

Now the ethical questions: will this crazy sum of money (seriously, I can’t picture $14 million bucks in my head) become “the norm” in the world of Hollywood now?  Will other celebrities expect money like this for their pictures?  Also, is it even right to sell your baby’s pictures to the media and essentially objectify them at such a young and vulnerable age? 

Then comes the mental health of the child later upon learning that pictures of them were sold for all of the world to see.  Will the kids resent their parents later? 

Also, where is the money going?  Does the fact that some or all of the money received for pictures may go to charity change things at all?
Everyone has a different opinion about this issue.  I personally think that if the pictures are not sold to the media in the beginning, the paparazzi will go crazy trying to pry their way into the lives of celebrities just to get the first one.  Also, the financial aspect is really not anyone’s business.  If a mother–who spent hours and hours giving birth to a child– decides to take and sell some pictures, that’s her choice.  She clearly is making the best choice she can make for her child and her family.  I also think that charitable donations are an honorable cause and it’s wonderful that a few pictures could benefit the multitude of groups receiving aid because of a few pictures. 

In the end, what does it matter?  We are so saturated with images, celebrity news, drama, and gossip that the pictures will be old news before we know it. 

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AUGUST 25, 2008

I’ve been following the trend of migration of TV viewers to the internet for a couple of months now and recently came across this article in The Los Angeles Times.

What really struck me was this quote from the article: “[F]or the first time…a ‘significant portion’ of the online audience for a prime-time TV show is not always watching the show on TV.”

And, check out this stat:

• More than 20% of Americans watched some prime-time TV on a computer monitor during the Spring 2008 TV season, up from 6% in the fall of 2007 (Integrated Media Measurement, a San Mateo, CA research firm).

Although this stat may be skewed by the writers’ strike that started November 5, 2007 and ended February 12, 2008 when new TV show episode production was essentially shut down due to a lack of writers or production staff, a 14% difference from one year to the next seems like a dramatic shift.

If this keeps up, television broadcast networks had better take heed.  And some already have.  According to this MediaWeek article, the WB.com will launch on August 27, showing series that aired on the TV network in addition to a new series.

While I do occasionally watch TV episodes online, I have no intention of ditching my TV set and moving my couch in front of my computer monitor.  I still enjoy watching TV episodes and movies in front of the tube.  What I really want is the flexibility and convenience to download episodes and movies when I want but then watch them on my big screen.

Some companies have anticipated this desire.  Sony’s Playstation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE have services that allow users to rent movies and download TV shows and watch them on your TV set.  And Apple Inc.’s Apple TV also lets users watch downloaded iTunes content on their sets.

Is the television set slowly becoming extinct or simply learning to share the attention?  No matter the outcome, this trend has spurred innovative technologies, as I mentioned, that now more than ever allow the consumer to take more control of the content that is offered to them.

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AUGUST 22, 2008

I recently went out to dinner at a relatively upscale restaurant in the area.  My husband and I were leisurely enjoying our dinner when I looked up and noticed that there was a TV directly in my line of vision, broadcasting a baseball game.  While I have nothing against baseball or TV in general, I was annoyed by the fact that there seems to be no way to avoid it. It used to be the only place to watch TV was at your house or maybe local sports bars — now, there is no escape.

And it’s not just restaurants.  Have you noticed that everywhere you go these days there seems to be a TV blaring the latest advertisements, infotainment segments or election news?  TV screens are now ever-present at airports, doctors offices, gas station pumps, grocery store check out lines, the gym, the office, and definitely restaurants.  Can you even remember the last time you ate at a restaurant that didn’t have a TV on at the bar?

A recent study by Arbitron media found that one in three people watch television outside of their own home on any given day.

Is it that we are so used to being bombarded with information and entertainment that we can’t tolerate being alone with our thoughts?  Or perhaps marketers and entertainers feel they have no choice in today’s saturated society but to try and reach us at all times and places.  Do we really need to be entertained for the three minutes it takes to fill up our gas tank?  Will we lead a less fulfilling life if we aren’t aware of the latest Hollywood breakup immediately via the mall TV channel?

A recent Fast Company article touches on this phenomenon, stating:

In a DVR world, advertisers are reaching outside the home for today’s most desirable audience: a captive one. Anywhere people might be waiting equals an opportunity to air short-form content and advertising.

And according to a recent New York Times article:

There are at least 37,000 shops, offices and health clubs across the country that broadcast ads on TV screens…and are also in 20 percent of all groceries and 11 percent of all office  buildings.  The Wal-Mart TV Network now includes more than 125,000 screens in 2,850 Wal-Mart stores.

What do you think?  Does it bother you to have TV programming everywhere you go in today’s society? Or do you welcome the distraction and entertainment?

I, for one, could do without it.

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AUGUST 8, 2008

I listened to an interesting interview on the Diane Rehm show this week.  Her guest was Dan Gardner, Ottawa Citizen columnist and author of the recently released book The Science Of Fear.

If you have read any of my other posts, you know that I like to write about putting risks in perspective and why we worry about the wrong things.  So, I couldn’t have been any happier to take an hour out of my day to listen to Gardner’s interview.  His overarching message was music to my ears.  During his interview he talked extensively about our “risk society” and why we are increasingly preoccupied with threats to health and safety.

Gardner made the point that while we sense more fear than prior generations, we are actually the safest and healthiest people that ever lived.  Although, as he acknowledges, the fear point may be a great generalization, the fact of our improved health and safety today is not.  He cited our increased life expectancy as proof.  But, you can also look at many other factors to support the statement.  Take for example cancer and heart disease.  As noted in one of my blog posts from earlier this year death rates from these causes have been dropping, yet we’re worrying more.

He also make a very interesting point about “intuitive toxicology,” a term he says was coined by Paul Slovic and essentially means that our gut reaction tells us to think that “there’s no safe level.”  Gardner explains that just because it’s there, doesn’t mean it’s harmful.  Measurement technology has improved so much over the last several years that we are able to detect contaminants down to parts per trillion levels.  Parts per trillion?  To give you some context on that, one part per trillion equates to 1 second in 320 centuries or 1 cent to $10 billion.  I agree with Gardner’s point that just because it’s there doesn’t necessarily mean it’s harmful and I think this is a great example of the need to put risks in perspective.  Should we really spend time worrying about a part per trillion of a substance in our water?

Gardner attributes the fact that we often get risks wrong to three factors – media, fear marketers and psychology.  For example, he says the media (himself included) do a terrible job of reporting on risk because the media “routinely reports on the rare, and rarely reports on the routine.”  He also says that so called “fear marketers” such as organizations that profit from fear and politicians perpetuate risk and fuel our worry.  Finally, he says psychology also plays a role in all of this.

As you can imagine, I agree on all points to varying degrees and I think he makes a strong argument for why we worry about the wrong things.  What do you think?

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AUGUST 6, 2008

Julia Allison is a bona fide celebrity icon – and I mean that in the truest sense of the word.  Unlike some of her infamous counterparts, Julia’s luminary status has been achieved without duping, disgusting or selling out to the viewing public.  And even though none of us actually knows Julia in “real life,” she is possibly more real to her fans than most of her fans’ Facebook friends are to each other.

Let me back up.  Four years ago, Julia was not much different from you and me.  According to her personal bio, she got her start as a columnist at Georgetown University (Class of 2004) while earning a “spectacularly unprofitable degree” in Political Science.  She then moved to New York City to become a writer, and, after being rejected from a job at Bath & Body Works, finally managed to convince an editor at the Manhattan newspaper AM New York to begin running her weekly dating columns.  This proved to be Julia’s “Big Apple” break.

For the past three years, to be sure, Julia has been living a writer’s dream.  Her columns have been published in Cosmopolitan, Maxim, New York magazine, The Huffington Post, Page Six, Marie Claire UK, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Capitol File, and Men’s Health, among others.  She has made over 350 on-air appearances in the past year alone, including CNN, MSNBC, Vh1, Fox, E!, CBS, NBC, CW, FoxNews, FoxBusiness, Fuse, G4 and others.

Julia has a Facebook account, a Myspace page, a Flickr account, a Twitter address, a Friendfeed, four Tumblrs, three blogs, two Vimeos, one YouTube account and a photogenic white shih-tzu named Marshmallow.  Plastered on Julia’s social networking sites are complimentary quotes from popular media figures, including Michael Wilbon of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption, who went as far as to call Julia “an American original.”

And it’s this label as “an American original” that makes Julia’s rise to stardom so incredibly fascinating.

In an earlier post I wrote that 21st century America has become saturated and polluted by phoniness, including: embellished social network profiles, fake blogs, and phony online diaries; performance enhancing drugs like anabolic steroids and amphetamines; fabricated memoirs like A Million Little Pieces and Love and Consequences; and even the questionable tear shed by Hillary Clinton.

However, what separates Julia Allison from this pack of wanna-be phonies is, quite simply, her authenticity.  Jason Tanz with Wired magazine likewise values the legitimacy of her celebrity, as he writes, “She’s not an actress or a singer or a misbehaving heiress to a hotel fortune.  She hasn’t recoded any meme-ready videos like Tay ‘Chocolate Rain’ Zonday or Tron Guy or the ‘Leave Britney Alone!’ dude.  She doesn’t flaunt tech knowledge like bloggers Robert Scoble or Dave Winer. . . . Allison is the latest, and perhaps purest, iteration of the Warholian ideal: someone who is famous for being famous.”

Moreover, to those who dismiss Julia Allison as little more than a rank narcissist, Tanz responds:

Admit it: you’ve spent a good half hour trying to pick out the most flattering photo to upload to your MySpace page.  You struggle to come up with the mot juste to describe your Facebook status.  You keep a bank of self-portraits on Flickr or an online scrapbook on Tumblr or a running log of your daily musings on Blogger.  You strategically court the gatekeepers at StumbleUpon or Digg.  You compare the size of your Twitter-subscriber rolls to those of your friends.  You set up Google Alerts to tell you whenever a blogger mentions your name.  See?  Self-promotion is no longer solely the domain of egotists and professional aspirants.  Anyone can be a personal branding machine.

In the end, Julia Allison may be a bona fide online celebrity - or a celebrated digital narcissist, as some claim - BUT, she is also just a girl, sitting in front of a computer, asking it to love her.  And, in that sense, we are all digital narcissists.

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