Xark!

Truth & the Confederate flag

2009-07-09T01:34:36-04:00

So it turns out that the ACC -- the once-upon-a-time Tobacco Road conference that now stretches from Miami to Boston -- has ditched Myrtle Beach for its 2010 baseball tournament because of the Confederate flag that still flies on the Statehouse grounds.

Let's be realistic up front. Nobody cares about the ACC baseball tournament. As big league college sports goes, this is about as small as it gets. And let's be clear: South Carolina's fringe passion for the "heritage" of a Confederate flag that didn't fly above its Statehouse until 1963 is about as dumb as a box of rocks.

But here's the part of this story you wouldn't get if you were just dropping in from another part of the country, South Carolina is an equal opportunity state when it comes to stupid politicians of any race. We didn't suddenly invent idiot politicos like Mark Sanford and Andre Bauer. They're a tradition.

Here's the short version of our flag story: About 100 years after the Civil War began here, dumb-ass white men in our State Legislature voted to raise a Confederate battle flag above our Statehouse, ostensibly as a centennial observance. But the real purpose, stated or otherwise, was obvious: South Carolina's white power structure was protesting the Civil Rights movement.

That flag of defiance and protest stayed up -- until the state's black politicians forced its removal onto the legistative agenda in the 1990s. Flag backers declared it was "Heritage Not Hate" that explained their passionate support for the flag of a hostile nation flying above our seat of government, but never mind that: Hate was always part of the equation for many Confederate flag-flyers, and no amount of self-righteous denial was ever satisfactory.

In 1998, South Carolina elected a Democrat, Jim Hodges, as its governor. Considering the fact that South Carolina is an absurdly Republican state (how else can you explain Andre Bauer as lieutenant governor and Jim DeMint as a U.S. Senator?) with Republicans solidly in charge of both the House and Senate, Hodges' victory should have been viewed by Democrats as a gift from God. This, of course, never occurred to any of them..

After taking office, Hodges approached the state's black legislative leadership with a deal to remove the Confederate flag from atop the Statehouse. Hodges proposed to attract the needed Republican votes by placing the flag at the Wade Hampton memorial on the Statehouse grounds, and he asked the Black Legislative Caucus to support his compromise.

For those of you who've never walked the Statehouse grounds, the memorial to Wade Hampton (a Civil War general who became a Reconstruction terrorist and later the state's populist governor) is located on a pedestrian mall between the neo-classical Statehouse and some 20th century legislative office buildings. It isn't hidden, but on the other hand, it isn't visible from a public street unless you're really, really looking for it.

Moving the flag to the Wade Hampton memorial was absolutely a best-case scenario for the "take-down-the-flag" coalition, which happened to include multiple white politicians, including some Republicans who quietly balanced membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans with the knowledge that flying the flag into the 21st century was an utterly backwards embarrassment. Those GOP moderates were sure to catch Hell for supporting a move to Wade Hampton, but they were likely to do it under the cover provided by Hodges' leadership.

Only there was one problem. Sen. Darrelll Jackson. Jackson, one of the state's top black political leaders at the time (he lost some of his significance when he hired himself out as a Hillary supporter at $15,000 a month in 2008), wanted the flag moved off the Statehouse grounds entirely -- even though there was no possible way that this could ever happen with Republicans controlling the Legislature. Hodges' staff cajoled, but Jackson and his allies stood firm.

Consequently, Hodges basically ceded control of the move-the-flag agenda to the Statehouse, where Republicans who would have likely backed the Wade Hampton option instead proposed taking the flag to the Confederate Soldiers Memorial. And as anyone who has ever driven past the Statehouse on Gervais Street will tell you, the Confederate Soldiers Memorial puts that goddamn ante bellum eyesore right in your face whenever you're going about your business downtown.

In the end, Democrats (both black and white) backed the Gervais option, simultaneously ending and perpetuating the flag controversy down to today... and the ACC baseball tournament decision.

This post isn't intended to defend the Confederate flag. Nor am I trying to suggest that black South Carolinians have no reason to distrust whites or push for matters of principle. They've got good reason to be suspicious.

But for the NAACP and black political leaders to act as if there were no middle path between the position of sovereignty atop the Statehouse dome and the position of prominence on Gervais Street is nothing but Grade-A bullshit. Gov. Hodges gift-wrapped a better solution for them, but our pandering, dumb-ass black leadership fumbled the opportunity to settle this in 1999-2000, thereby giving our dumb-ass white leadership the opportunity to pander to THEIR base and turn this into a perpetually divisive issue.

The politics of race in South Carolina reward both ends of this supremely stupid balance of ignorance, while punishing anyone who steps up and calls it what it is. As a 15-year citizen of this state, I'm sick and tired of this stupid status quo.

'Free' wants to be big

2009-07-08T15:43:21-04:00

This is a post I've hesitated to write, but given the recent back-and-forth over the book-length version of Chris Anderson's "Free" theory, I figured it was time. Because while I agree with Anderson's thesis, I also see in it the ironic demise of much of what I love about the DIY culture of networked media.

Stewart Brand said "information wants to be free" and got called a hippie for it. But if Information wants to be free, then Free wants to be Big.That principle suggests the reversal of another popular dictum of our decade, "Small is the new Big." And as a fan of Small, this disturbs me.

It's not all bad news, of course. But for professional content creators, it means we're still a long way from a robust business model, and that our future is likely to involve new bosses who may not be that different than the old ones we used to suffer..

Economies of scale

In an excellent piece on freeconomics posted Saturday, venture capitalist Fred Wilson delved into estimates of Facebook's numbers: If Facebook is running on monthly revenues of roughly $50 million, then the monthly value of an active Facebook user is about 25 cents.

On the one hand, spending $50 million to break even doesn't sound like a great deal. You could break even with a quality Small product for a lot less.

But here's the thing: If Facebook can hold the line on costs and boost the per-month value of each user from 25 cents to 50 cents (Wilson thinks it can), then it's looking at an annual profit of roughly $600 million. No amount of marketing could ever turn Talking Points Memo or other quality Small media sites into that kind of revenue engine.

So these are your choices: Invest lots of money in Big and you take a risk for the possibility of getting rich. Invest a little money in Small and you take a risk for the possibility of... well, what, exactly?

In the old days, you hoped your investment in a Web-based garage start-up would blossom into a property that you could package into a multi-million-dollar sale to Google or Amazon. Those deals have gotten extremely rare over the past two years, and with the expanding availability of free/low-cost tools, many new Web start-ups don't require investors in the first place. Innovation, it seemed earlier this year, was shifting from Big to Small.

But appearances can be deceiving. Consider these limits:

Using free services limits how you can make money off your new service/product.
Participating in someone else's platform (say Facebook's) means someone else controls the cap on your value -- and can reset the rules of your agreement, Darth Vader style, whenever it suits them.
Bootstrapping generally means you're investing your time in making things work -- and unless you're a skilled programmer, that means your "system" is probably human-powered. Human-powered systems have advantages, but low unit costs generally isn't one of them.
The old bootstrap-to-sell-out path to Internet wealth was based on a simple exit strategy: convincing bigger companies that the combination of your system/solution/brand was a better value than creating their own version of the same service/product. Given the three conditions I just listed, that's now an extremely tough sell.

Result? I see two futures for Small media. One is shoddy, tawdry and cheap. The other is higher quality, local... and generally only borderline sustainable. Despite all the stress and risk involved, running your own small-scale Web media start-up is essentially just giving yourself a job.

Of course, for many of us, that job is all we want. That's part of the beauty of Small.

But here's the problem: If you're running your own small site or service, odds are you're too busy to do much else -- like positioning your company for the rapidly approaching future..Sure, Big companies may turn like ocean liners, but the smaller your business, the greater the likelihood that a relatively minor technological or economic disruption will wipe out everything you've built..

The Wal-Mart Factor

Despite the waves of citizen media it has unleashed, freeconomics is more likely to replicate the Wal-Mart experience than it is to create some hippie media utopia. Just as the expansion of the Wal-Mart franchise wiped out local economies around the United States in the 1990s, so too is the expansion of free content and services likely to obliterate online business niches.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the display advertising market. The Dot-Com bubble was based on the idea that Web advertising rates would be similar to their print forebears. They weren't. Today's CPM ad rates are even cheaper, and it's not clear that they've hit bottom.

Making a living doing something on a small scale means charging a relatively high price for it, and if you can't compete on price and you can't invest in innovation, you're pretty much stuck with what you've got. That's a bad place to be today.

None of this would be too worrisome if there were an obvious way to progress from a Small Web start-up to something resembling the profitable-but-stable mid-sized companies of the 20th century. But the reality is that today's Small media start-up is so fundamentally different from a Big media company that the possibility of "scaling up" simply isn't available.

Big, Open, or Along for the Ride

I've got friends who believe the recession is over, that reports of "green shoots" herald the coming of a new bull market. I'm sorry to disagree, but I think we've got at least one more dip to go in this recession, and that portends the longer, slower recovery so many economists feared. It's likely to be even worse in the media industry.

Of course, one thing about recessions is that they tend to be the periods in which significant capital formation occurs. So while many of us go scraping around with our Small ideas, Big companies are investing millions of dollars in new tools that will change everything as soon as they're released (See: Wave).

Small can't compete with Big for that. The days of the garage start-up are ending, not because people lack vision, but because the next generation of tools is likely to be so much more complex. Two bicycle mechanics built the first airplane. The likelihood of two bicycle mechanics building the replacement for a Boeing 747 is exactly nil.

Small might be able to stay relevant by collaborating with Open, expanding the Open Source Movement into something we might call The Open Source Sector. This could be everything from community-run projects (Mozilla) to big company releases (Google's new Chrome OS) to cooperative ventures (Melody).

But let's be realistic about Open. Most open-source projects are funded by Big companies, and the power of Open is now so obvious to Big that it's become the deployment method of choice for Google. Expect others to follow..

All of which means one thing: If you're not Big or Open -- or both -- then you're probably just along for the ride.

So what should we do?

I catch a lot of shit for openly advocating the death of brain-dead newspaper companies, but let's be clear: It's the brain-deadness that I want to see purged, not the news. I spent years trying to figure out how to help newspapers make the transition from the old model to a new one, and brain-deadness got in the way every time. It's doing it again this summer.

In 2005-07, I figured newspaper companies had a great chance to bridge the gap to 21st century media. Now I suspect most won't. But there's one example of a newspaper that has an excellent chance to take the advantages of Big and the values of Small and combine them into a model that could produce something remarkable: The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

The Gaz is family owned. It isn't absurdly over-leveraged with debt. It has a free-thinking, creative boss (Chuck Peters) who went out and hired one of the most visionary people in the business (Steve Buttry). At a moment when everybody else in the news business seems committed to doing things wrong, these people seem intent on getting it right. It's a messy, frustrating process, but what The Gaz is attempting is what Big media everywhere should be doing: Using the power of Big to build innovative tools that make money by connecting people and communities.

Xark can't do that. Google could, but it hasn't yet.

I hope The Gaz is successful, because we desperately need it to be (and yes, I promise to blog about my visit to Cedar Rapids soon). If there's a successful proof of concept there, then perhaps new capital will form in the vacuums left by failing newspapers. Perhaps we'll see the spread of tools and revenue-producing relationships that will provide reasonable profits for investors and sustainable incomes for content producers. Perhaps.

In the meantime, I don't know what to tell you. The future isn't written, and it's likely to be diverse and experimental.

But what's becoming increasingly clear to me is this: Just as the beginning of this recession dispersed power, its end is likely to see power re-focused in Big new ways.

Another 3-point plan to save American newspapers

2009-07-07T16:39:15-04:00

Someone on Twitter posted a link to this "Three-Point Plan to Save U.S. Newspapers," which you're free to read. However, I think my three-point plan is much more practical and realistic.

FIRST: Richard Posner didn't go far enough when he suggested we outlaw linkiing. To really save newspapers, we need to make writing in public about news-related topics illegal without a federal license. And since civil penalties are for wussies, let's take this straight to the criminal docket. Federal licenses will be available to all Americans at absolutely no cost (provided you own and operate a printing press or an FCC-licensed TV station).

SECOND: Since people won't pay for news online and display advertising rates are in the toilet, it's obvious that we'll have to find another way to collect the 20 percent profits that rightfully belong to newspaper publishers by deed of Divine Providence. The best option: A federal online media tax, collected every month via your ISP bill. It will only cost you $10 per month, with the money going into a pool to be shared by federally licensed news media. We get to keep making the kinds of profits only drug kingpins earn right now, and you get to keep reading the high-quality mainstream news stories you know and love.

THIRD: Americans have grown used to getting their news for free, and exposure to the Worldwide Web has educated many of our fellow citizens to the generally shoddy state of print journalism in the era of cutbacks and furloughs. Studies suggest they'll never go back to their old habits. Solution? Since Superman is in fact reporter Clark Kent (buy a clue: they're the same guy, only Kent wears glasses!), we give him an ultimatum: "Either fly around the world so fast that it reverses the rotation of the Earth, taking us back in time to 1955, or you AND Lois Lane are GONE in the next round of layoffs!"

See? Three steps.

Simple.

In support of terrorism

2009-07-01T09:07:30-04:00

These people are out of their minds, displaying the kind of fanaticism that goes beyond laughable and into the dangerous. Michael Scheuer, appearing on Fox News, tells Glenn Beck ""The only chance we have as a country right now is" for bin Laden to "detonate a major weapon" in U S. Yep, they are WISHING for Americans to die so that they can push their political agenda.

It's time for Republicans to call these people what they are and to distance themselves from such lunatics and a network that promotes them. Seriously, folks, come back to reality.

The #helpgeoff thing

2009-06-29T15:56:41-04:00

Earlier today Janet (@xarkgirl) messaged me that our filmmaking buddy Geoff Marshall was in trouble: His 48-state documentary roadtrip had been interrupted in Greensboro, NC, by a smash-and-grab auto break-in. He lost about $6,000 in video and computer electronics, and apparently some of his material for the film (which he has been videoblogging along the way).

Janet wanted me to contact our Greensboro friends, which I did, getting quick responses from John Robinson, Sue Polinsky and Ed Cone. And as I was doing that, Chrys Rynearson popped up in my Google Talk bar:

exposur3: dude
fundraiser

let's get it going

we can raise 5k

what do you think?

A few hours later, Geoff had bloggers in Greensboro and Charleston working his case and offering help. We had a Help Geoff blog, a Help Geoff Twitter account, a new e-mail address, plus accounts at Tipjoy and PayPal.Someone suggested a #helpgeoff hashtag. We'd worked through numerous technical difficulties, all without anyone "being in charge."

The best place to follow all this? At Charleston's TheDigitel, where Geoff's former boss, Ken Hawkins, is covering this like the community story it is.

Here's what makes it all particularly sweet to me: The most influential moment in my turn toward networked media occurred in 2005 at ConvergeSouth , the Greensboro conference organized by Sue and a host of others. It's where we met John Robinson. It's what inspired Janet and I to launch Lowcountry Blogs in April 2006. At the final free ConvergeSouth in 2008, one of the largest and most enthusiastic groups in attendence were bloggers from coastal South Carolina.We owe a lot to those people in Greensboro.

As his friend, it's my duty to say that Geoff is a dumbass for leaving his stuff in the car, but as Chrys said, "He's our boy." And frankly, I just don't want want his documentary to end in a way that portrays America that way. Online communities are communities nonetheless. Let's see how well they function.

We still need professionals. Duh.

2009-06-28T13:50:03-04:00

A friend kept asking me this question, and I kept not understanding it: How could the Twitter/networked media world have managed to get a reporter down to Atlanta, down to the airport, in time to ambush Gov. Mark Sanford on his arrival from Argentina?

Eventually, though, I got it: Since I'm an advocate of networked media and a critic of mass media, wouldn't I concede that there are times when a professional press has advantages? It was, to me, a good-natured form of the question, "Aren't you wrong?"

Well, I'm often wrong, but to the extent that people have projected such thoughts on me, it's time for a clarification. Professionals are important. We need them. If we're going to have them, then we must pay them a living wage.

Here's the flip side of that: To be a professional, one must work in a profession, and a profession is defined by its agreed-upon standards. To be a professional, one must deliver work that is demonstrably better than what one would expect from an amateur. To be a professional is not merely to have resources, but to be worthy of them.

The profession of journalism is in flux, and that's at least as significant as the transition from the old business model to whatever comes next. "The Audience" is now "the people formerly known as the audience," and we're all accountable for incorporating the new communications tools into our thinking. So when I bang on "the pros" for prat-falling in the face of all this change, that's not because I oppose the idea of a professional press.

I'm advocating for one.

The teachable moment passes

2009-06-28T13:04:12-04:00

So The State newspaper published its account of how the Mark Sanford story went down, and it adds some useful details: Why the staff figured the Mark-Maria e-mails were sent from Argentina, how they came to send a reporter to Atlanta, the steps the staff took to make sure that Sanford's people understood they had the emails and were going to ask about them, etc.

But the tick-tock didn't cast any new light on what concerned me as a journalist: How did it come to pass that The State sat on those e-mails for almost six months? Why did The State's editors choose not to take the text of those e-mails to the governor's press office for comment months ago? And no, before you ask, this isn't a suggestion that The State should have published the e-mails if the governor's response was to deny their authenticity.

There are right and wrong answers in any profession, and then there's the grey area, which is where this decision falls. I still believe The State could give a convincing and compelling answer to the questions I've asked, but I'm not surprised that their account of their role in the story doesn't address in any way the decision-making process behind their choice to sit on their evidence. That kind of candor requires a degree of editorial transparency that most news executives despise.

I wanted to talk about that decision-making, because this was a teachable moment for journalism -- a moment for journalists to consider their processes and disciplines, but also a chance for consumers of mass media and networked journalism to explore the ethics of a tricky choice. With few exceptions, however, that wasn't the conversation others wished to have -- not about Sanford, not about the press. C'est la vie, c'est la guerre.

But let me summarize my feelings this way: The opaque gamesmanship of mass-media journalism is not aging well. We can do better.

The State's non-answer FAIL

2009-06-26T13:09:08-04:00

Remember those arguments about how Americans are going to regret letting newspapers die because the digital rabble can't do the serious investigative watchdog work of professional reporters? The biggest problem with this argument is that it assumes a fact not in evidence: A widespread discipline of investigation in the professional press.

I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of night’s light — but hey, that would be going into the sexual details we spoke of at the steakhouse at dinner — and unlike you I would never do that!

That painfully private expression is a clip from an e-mail sent by S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford to his Argentinian mistress in July 2008 and published by The State newspaper on Wednesday afternoon following the governor's confession... six months after an anonymous source sent the paper a collection of e-mails between the lovers. To me that raised a series of immediate questions: Why did it take so long? How did The State handle this potentially significant story?

So I e-mailed my questions to the reporter who wrote the first account of The State's role in the story. His response: We'll tell our story on Sunday, and other than that, no comment.

Of course, my old friend Schuyler Kropf managed to get more out of John O'Connor, and after reading Schuyler's story this morning it occurs to me that O'Connor should have stuck to his original silence. What The State has revealed about its handling of the Mark-Maria e-mails offers a rare glimpse of the hollow state of the modern American newsroom.

The emails arrived at The State via a UK proxy, an indication that whoever sent them was working carefully to shield his or her identity. The State's attempt to verify these documents (which it wisely and obviously noted could have been fakes) consisted of trying to get the sender to identify him or herself to them and then "other ways, all of which were fruitless. 'We didn't sit on them, but we couldn't prove them,' O'Connor said."

We still don't know what those other attempts at verification were, but we do know what approach The State didn't try: Asking the governor's office.

Confronting the governor directly was ruled out, he said, because of the fear of losing the potentially exclusive story they were holding; they thought they would have had to turn copies over to the governor or his staff for authenticity review.
Sanford's press office is savvy, he said, and reporters knew "if we didn't have the goods" they could lose the story.
Another fear was that if word got out that the e-mails existed, other media might start chasing after a story.
O'Connor said the staff worked the trail until they felt it went cold. Then "we kind of let them be for a while" as other events in state government took over. Then they were tipped about his flight from Argentina.

This utterly unsatisfactory answer demands a thorough fisking.

The e-mails, if authentic, went beyond salaciousness and represented an undeniable public-interest news story. If the married governor of your state is conducting an ongoing affair with a foreign national, that's an issue. If that governor has designs on national office, the significance multiplies.
The weight of that public interest far exceeds any supposed concerns about "losing the story" to a media competitor.
The claim that not showing the e-mails to the governor's office was a tactical decision based on preventing other media from picking up on the story is ludicrous on its face. Did The State have some assurance from the anonymous e-mailer that the Mark-Maria documents had not ALREADY been shared with every other newspaper, TV station, blogger and political operative in South Carolina? Absent that assurance, editors should have been operating under the assumption that others had -- or would soon receive -- the same materials.
As Schuyler quotes a Poynter journalism consultant: "The most common advice in such cases is 'report aggressively,' she said, but 'publish conservatively.'" And in this case, aggressive, public-interest reporting would have demanded giving the governor's press secretary the text of the unverified e-mails and asking one question: Are these authentic? Conservative publishing would have meant not publishing the e-mails without strong verification if the governor's office declared them to be fakes. "Asking" is not the same thing as "confronting," and a healthy news organization routinely explores news tips that never result in published stories.
Perhaps the governor's office would have denied their authenticity and then worked to cover up Sanford's affair. Perhaps the cover-up would have forced Sanford to end his affair quietly and allowed him to avoid this week's conflagration -- along with accountability for actions. Perhaps. And perhaps knowledge that someone was working to reveal his affair would have inspired Sanford to grow up and take responsibility for his simple human frailty. Or conduct a staff witch hunt. Or take up residence in a Shaolin monastery. Who knows? That's the problem with living in a world of hypotheticals. It's why direct is better.
I suppose from O'Connor's statement that The State feared giving over copies for review because it might have compromised the source, but that stands up to less than 10 seconds of scruitiny. Other than that concern (which can be easily resolved) what possible reason would The State have for wanting to prevent the governor's office from reading the text of the e-mails?
O'Connor implies that the governor's press office would have leaked the story to other media if The State didn't have "the goods" on Sanford. But that just begs the obvious question: Why? What possible motive would the governor's press staff have for giving a career-ending story to some other outlet? Spite? And if so, so what? Either way the truth comes out. Either way The State gets to claim credit for serving the public interest.
When journalists speak in passive voice, watch out. Notice how the phrase "Confronting the governor directly was ruled out" conceals the identity of whoever made the ruling? We use this lousy grammar in journalism for one of two reasons: It means we either don't know who did the thing or we don't want to say. And in this case, I can assure you that the decision on how to handle this story was not made by a political reporter and his metro-level assigning editor. It was made by the brass.
Well, which brass? How high up? In what discussions? With what concerns? As I wrote yesterday, I spent more than a decade of my life in a job that put me smack in the middle of these kinds of discussions, and they were often tense, confrontational and fraught with potentially career-ending suspicions of high-level hidden agendas. "Was ruled out" isn't a sufficient answer. "Was ruled out" is the essential dodge to the most important truth: Who decided the policy based on what concerns and what goals?

We still don't know that, and I'm not holding my breath for candor in The State's promised Sunday story. Here's why: For all my industry's claims to the nobility of our investigative, public-service mission, its decision-makers remain as veiled as the average Washington lobbying firm -- and even less accountable. At least the power of special-interest lobbies comes with some degree of regulation. The executives of the legacy press in America accept no public-interest limits on their kingmaking, mass-media power.

Sadly, the days when a story like the Mark-Maria e-mails could be pursued with a damn-the-torpedos commitment to reaching a conclusive answer have probably passed by this incarnation of the professional press. Newsrooms have been decimated (it's actually worse than that -- "to decimate" is to reduce by only a tenth) in cost-cutting measures intended to keep profits in the double-digit range. Investigative reporting gets talked about a great deal as newspaper executives make the case for their companies' survival, but it's not a major consideration in most newsrooms. Even shoe-leather beat reporting is in decline. Everything at American newspapers today is a cost-benefit analysis, and difficult stories are seldom viewed as being even worth the cost of the resulting attorneys' fees.

Think about that situation and ask yourself: Who gets promoted in that climate? What values do cost-cutters look for in their personnel decisions? And are these the people you want representing your interests at the intersection of mass media and political power?

Did the news and business executives at The State handle this situation unethically? I can't make that judgment with the available facts. I'm not asking them for an apology -- I'm asking them for a transparent accounting. If you're proud of how you handled this, show us how you handled this.

But yes, I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical because I have friends across the industry who tell me horror stories. I'm skeptical because I've witnessed horrible decisions. I'm skeptical because after 20 difficult years in the newspaper business, my experience of modern American journalism tells me that our claims of committed public service routinely conflict with what happens behind closed doors.

The American press fought to cast sunlight on government, to open documents and meetings to public scruitiny. It understood that secrets conveyed power on those who controlled them. Isn't it time we had a press that took its own top-level decision-making at least as seriously as what it demands of others?

Where's The State's explanation?

2009-06-25T11:20:58-04:00

UPDATE: THE STATE SAYS IT WILL EXPLAIN ITS HANDLING OF THE STORY ON SUNDAY. John O'Connor sent me the following reply to my question: "Dan, We are writing such a piece. It will be in Sunday's paper. Other than that, I can't comment further." -- dc

So yeah, my friend Brian Hicks had a "Dewey Beats Truman" moment yesterday with that "Much Ado About Nothing" headline in The Post and Courier. And yes, The P&C's "National Tizzy" overline on its Wednesday morning Mark Sanford-returns-to-Columbia story, coupled with a top editorial that lifted its lead directly from SC GOP Chairman Katon Dawson, combined to make "The South's Oldest Daily Newspaper" look pretty silly by Wednesday afternoon.

But that's understandable. The P&C pulled back its resources from Washington, Columbia and politics in general years ago (it has no one in Washington and just one reporter in a Columbia bureau that once employed three full-time staffers). They're a Lowcountry paper now.

No, the newspaper with some explaining to do this morning is The State, the McClatchy-owned Columbia metro that owns political and government coverage in South Carolina. It led all the way on the Sanford disappearance story, sent a reporter to meet his plane in Atlanta and generally did the unpopular things journalists do when they think there's more to a story than official statements would lead one to believe.

Yesterday, we learned one reason why: An anonymous source had given The State e-mails between Sanford and his mistress in December. Six months ago.

Staffer John O'Connor has an account of The State's handling of the e-mail story in today's paper, but it raises as many questions as it answers. What did The State do in its attempts to verify the emails? Did it present the emails to the governor's office and ask if they were real? If so, what did Sanford say? If not, then why the decision not to present the evidence to the governor's office? At what level were these decisions made? What internal discussions produced the news policy that kept these documents under wraps until yesterday?

More to the point: Was the "anonymous source" known or unknown to editors?

It's possible that the answers to these questions could make top editors uncomfortable, but let me be clear: There are often wise and principled reasons to sit on such evidence. As a former city editor, I've been involved in numerous editorial discussions that set high, cautious (sometimes overly cautious) standards for the release of bombshell material, and I often either agreed with the decision to withhold or led the argument against publication. Time can prove evidence right or wrong, but the thinking behind such decisions matters because it speaks not only to the ethics of the news organization, but also to its relationship to powerful people.

So I'm not judging The State's actions -- I'm just calling for its editors to explain their decisions fully and candidly. There's no FOIA required, no legal charge, no lawyers required. Just walk across the newsroom and ask.

(Note: I sent an email asking John O'Connor these questions, and his reply is quoted above. In the meantime there's this New York Times piece that gets answers to some of these questions. It adds additional bits of information -- the e-mails were sent by e-mail, anonymously, editors say -- but stops short of a satisfying description).

Sanford's private Twitterstream

2009-06-24T11:34:37-04:00

Lifted from @GuvMarkyMark, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford's personal Twitter account.

THURSDAY
Why is everybody in Columbia so freakin' stupid?
9:44 AM on June 17 from Tweetie

Havin a bad day. Hey, @SexySarahPGuv, gimme a holla.
4:41 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

You know that thing about how the GOP isn't suppose to attack another GOPer? I guess that's not true in S.C. What Would Reagan Do? #tcot
6:02 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

I've never felt so lonely.
6:03 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

Yo, anybody up for a road trip?
6:04 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

Fine. Nobody wants to roadtrip w/me to South of the Border, FINE. I'm the GOVERNOR, ok? I've got a SLED DETAIL. I've always got Peeps, OK?
7:14 PM on June 17 from Tweetie

FRIDAY
Screw Jenny. "Ooooo, Mark, I don't wanna go CAMPING. It's to HOT. There'll be BUGS." Fine, Jenny. Stay home. See if I care.
7:26 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv, can you get away? Wanna go hiking?
7:28 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv Springer Mnt, Ga. It's on the Appalachian Trail.
7:26 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv No, that's on the east coast.
7:27 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv No, of the United States.
7:27 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv No, that would be the REPUBLIC of Georgia. You can see Russia from there. LOL.
7:27 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv Don't be mad. Just kiddin.
7:28 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv Don't be so sensitive. JEEZ!
7:28 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv FINE! FORGET ABOUT IT! AND SAYING "JEEZ" ISN'T TAKING THE LORD'S NAME IN VAIN EITHER.
7:28 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

Sarah Palin is NOT the future of the Republican Party. DM me for details. #tcot
7:30 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

Sometimes a MAN just needs to get away, to the mountains & land from which he draws his strength & vision & faith. #tcot #manlymen (1/2)
10:13 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

(2/2) Therefore I shall go unto the hills, to better hear the voice of our Lord, who calls upon me to heal and restore our GOP. #tcot #2012
10:14 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

Just remembered I loaned my sleeping bag to @LindseyG_Unit for his Bohemian Grove trip. Had to take Jenny's. Smells like Chanel No.5
10:19 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

ON THE ROAD! FINALLY! TUNES PUMPIN!
11:57 AM on June 18 from Tweetie

Georgia Visitor's Center on I-85. Man, it's HOT out here. This is RIDICULOUS. Re-thinking...
1:42 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SenJimDeMint Dude, if you were picking a short-notice vacation destination, what would you pick?
1:44 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SenJimDeMint Been to Vegas already. Bangkok too. Overrated.
1:45 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

@DanRavenel Dude, I LOVE Buenas Aires! Had a GREAT junket down there with Commerce. Thanks for the Twitpic -- those chicas are HOT!
1:46 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

TIX booked! Buenas Aires, here I come!
2:05 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

Just blocked Jenny. Had to stop those DMs. LOL.
3:07 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv I'm flying down to Buenas Aires. Can you get away? I thought we might talk policy over some Pisco Sours.
3:08 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv It's a drink.
3:08 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv Your loss. I don't reject ALL forms of stimulus, you know. LOL.
3:09 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv ROTFLMAO
3:09 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv "Rolling on The Floor Laughing My Ass Off."
3:10 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv I don't think that's inappropriate language at all. Sheesh.
3:11 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

@SexySarahPGuv Whatever, girl. I'm gonna get my drink on.
3:12 PM on June 18 from Tweetie

SATURDAY
What time zone is this?
5:55 AM on June 19 from Tweetie

I think I just saw Madonna.
4:32 PM on June 19 from Tweetie

What's the Spanish word for "lap dance?" #lazyweb
11:48 PM on Jue 19 from Tweetie

RT @SenJohnMcCain Spanish phrase for lapdance is para unúnico cliente but don't tell anybody I told you that >> LOL!
11:57 PM on June 19 from Tweetie

SUNDAY
I need a lawyer. In Argentina. Quick.
7:25 AM June 20 from Tweetie

Board Certification in Social Media

2009-06-23T13:53:54-04:00

(Click to see larger size)

Everyone who comes out this evening for tonight's panel discussion (6:30 p.m., Room 100, Maybank Hall, College of Charleston campus) sponsored by The Social Media Club of Charleston qualifies for one of these puppies -- YOUR VERY OWN PRINTED PROOF OF SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERTISE! And it's SUITABLE FOR FRAMING!

Can't make it? Well, you too can become BOARD CERTIFIED as a SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT for the LOW, LOW COST of just $50. To receive your board certification certificate, send check or money order to:

Social Media Certification
c/o Dan Conover
794 Rutledge Ave.
Charleston, SC 29403

... and then click here to download a PDF version of the certificate.

Happy experting!

House party @ Chez XARK!

2009-06-20T09:16:16-04:00

(Click on the image to see it larger... click here to download a PDF of the party flier to post wherever...)

We've been meaning to throw a house party for a long time now, and on vacation last week, Janet got over her innate terror of guests realizing that we don't live in a Southern Living showcase and said "OK." So it's on, people: SATURDAY, JUNE 27 (from 6:30 p.m. until the cops arrive). here in lovely North Central Charleston, just up the street from the intersection of Rutledge and Grove which played such a funny role in Charlie Geer's novel Outbound.

It's not the biggest house in the world, but we've got a nice porch and a back yard and I'll open up the garage and the boys have said they'll set up and play live out back (if you feel like jamming, bring your instrument). Don't bother to dress up, remember that early evenings in June mean bug spray if you're gonna sit in the back yard, and then make plans to drop in, hang out and have fun.

Here's our house on Google.If you think you might come, feel free to let us know (helps with the shopping). We're looking forward to seeing you!

Why I joined the Digital Mob

2009-06-17T10:11:57-04:00

For about an hour on Tuesday I pointed my browser to a proxy that refreshed an official Iranian government site every second. In doing so, I participated in a form of cyberwarfare called a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, and the ethics of that act are complex.

To me, though, my intention made the ethics simple. I wasn't opening a dialog or expressing a thought. I was throwing a rock. And no matter how evolved we become, it's important to remember that a rock through a window remains an effective way of communicating to the people inside that the people outside are displeased.

Constructive? Absolutely not. But it delivered the message that government repression could be confronted by other forces, and it did so in a language understood by bullies of all nationalities: Power.

We need to construct a better world, and we won't do that by violence. But our strength as a distributed network of people who care about justice and democracy need not always be hobbled by the finer points of discussion, no matter how valid those principles may be.

A rock isn't the message. It's a medium.

Civilization

2009-06-17T08:18:17-04:00

There is only a snout
that breaks the cloud surface
of paint-flaking undershot glass
And it's only her tail
stirring the sky over the Institute
and rattling the ribs of the city.
You never quite see this secret Sky Lizard,
this Big Gator Mother,
only what she leaves us,
in her wake, printed in the bellowing mud,
vibrating on the rooftops and swamps
of bars and breezeways.

I went looking for The Big Gator Mother in an airplane
but then in a boat on the green concrete river, in my quinine pith helmet,
I found her.

Found her pattern like a track in wave rhythm.
Found her smile in frozen balustrade, in a window up below me,
for I was underwater and heading downstream,
looking for alligators and lily pads.

Attention, citizens: The Big Gator Mother
requires your children.
You may drop them off the bridges,
plop plop plop
before going into town.
She's a lazy old lizard, or so she seems,
lying about with her snout poking out of the street,
her eyes up below
and her slow undulation
that ripples the asphalt, rising and falling.
She is eating your children as they bob in green water
and then motoring elsewhere.

The Big Gator Mother says nothing, she is
below in the cloud, swimming, she is
one long line in the ancient mud, through Sullivan and Wright,
across the prairie sky, across the ancient lazy rivers,
where she bobs for your children like little green apples.
She is everywhere here, her beauty assured by a steady diet of children.

The children are cried out and silent
as she takes them for harvest, pulling them up
and crunching their soft bones, then
shitting them out,
fertilizing fields by the Institute,
weaving strands of their eaten dreams into iron grates,
stone blocks and steel kick-plates, stitching their beautiful sobbing
into Gothic limestone shawls that
she drapes over mounds of skulls in whimsical fancies.
Spires of skulls and dreams, paintings that boil your heart down to tallow,
tallow to spread cross the sky like a schmear,
a ravenous breakfast of children and memory,
stocked up against hunger and greed
by the secret Sky Lizard,
who stalked her way out of the ancient mud Nile
and went wandering.

I don't eat children. I grow them and sell them
and walk over children on my way down to picnic,
their soft bones crunching beneath my penny loafers,
they surround me like lattice, appealing and mocking.
Some have been there forever.
Some we just planted yesterday.

But there they are! I am staring out the window now, down to the green river, where everything beautiful is bleached white of sorrow, where joy slows down, remembered only in brick, where spines poke from the Earth like dinosaur fossils, where the Big Gator Mother presides under all,
heavy and hungry.

--May 3, Chicago

The betrayal of the Fourth Estate

2009-06-16T15:09:41-04:00

I have attempted to be discreet on the decline and fall of the media empire, mostly because I am still in it. With layoffs and furloughs announced every quarter, the consequences of being brutally honest could be dire. But I am disgusted by the complete hypocrisy of the newspaper industry, whose leaders are staking a claim to the sacred art of journalism, as if it has sole rights to it. The assertion by newspaper executives that newspapers are the torch-bearers for a community (or global) moral and ethical center would be laughable, if it were not being used to cloak the greed of corporations that have enjoyed healthy profit margins for decades, all the while failing to invest in anything other than expanding their arrogance.

These corporations profess it is their duty to hold the world to a higher standard but conveniently overlook their failure to substantively investigate major issues and their own increasing immersion in the very organizations they profess to watchdog. Three words. Yellow cake uranium. Need more? WMDs. Economic meltdown. Climate change. Want a book? Death by Journalism. Into the Buzzsaw.

(Note to press: You are supposed to COVER politicos not hang out with them.)

And when confronted with the natural results of competition and poor business practices, they are suddenly willing to edge up to the lines they claim to guard. (And the notion that this decline blindsided execs or is solely caused by the current economic meltdown or Google is ridiculous.)

Journalism has, as most human efforts do, the good, the bad and the ugly. There are legitimate uses of the freedom of the press to expose abuses, explore the human condition and serve as a vital check on corruption and secrecy. There are boring and poorly written stories that miss the point, or just serve no more purpose that fill some space around advertisements.

Then there is the ugly: Deliberate quashing of stories because the business in question was run by the editor's brother-in-law. Or because a major ad client objected. Or because the publisher played golf with the senator. Headlines that push agendas. Leads rewritten to not be controversial. Every journalist who's been in the business more than 15 minutes has a story that doesn't corroborate the image of the crusader protecting the public from vice and sin.

But so what? Human frailty has been part and parcel of journalism for years, whether you like to believe it or not. It's the pretending that newspapers are somehow immune and other forms of journalism are not that is such bullshit. Really? Blogging can't be journalism? If you want to flog that dead horse, you'll have to go elsewhere.

The tarnish on the halo newspaper execs have spent so much time polishing isn't just their unwillingness to acknowledge their own limitations and failures. It's how they treat their people. The betrayal of the Fourth Estate contract by newspaper management has played a huge role in their impending doom. It may be the one thing that guarantees their slide into irrelevancy.

Why? Because when the companies need their best and brightest to pull together, to help work smarter and better, they've got ... nothing. Many of the best and brightest have moved on because they can. Or they were the first out the door in layoffs. Those left feel trapped, bitter and betrayed. No pay raises. Furloughs. "Doing more with less." Not exactly a prescription for an ailing industry.

Journalists, with notable exceptions of course, tend to take the idea of a free press seriously. Starry-eyed reporters dreaming of Watergate-exposes see those stars circling their heads as soon as they smack into the reality of a newsroom.

The hours suck and always have. Many newspapers have round-the-clock shifts. Morning dailies mean people work until the wee hours, at odds with the rest of the world. Everyone works overtime and most places encourage it to be donated to The Mission. Holidays have curtailed staffs, but people have to work.

And we took pride in that. We were not shift workers. We stayed until it was done. Came in early. Worked weekends. This not to differentiate journalists from other lines of work. I'm certain there are employees all over the world whose companies create a culture in which devotion and commitment to The Mission are touted as the keys to success.

Guess what, loyal drones? Your employers profit handsomely off your willingness to donate time and labor. If the media industry is any example, guess what happens when times get tough? Newspapers have traditionally cut costs by cutting people.

Read how employees were treated when companies had to pare down. No parties. No farewells. No thanks. Sometimes not even for people who were employees for decades. Upper-level managers refused to personally deliver the news or acknowledge employees who had lost their jobs. Newspapers buried stories of their layoffs. I have friends who were told they were laid off, then escorted out humiliatingly by security personnel.

Care to take a gander at what newspapers pay their employees? Those bastions of moral superiority pay women the same way most corporations do: Less than men. If they even bother to promote them.

The whopping salaries of even high-ranking newsroom personnel hover around $68k.Not woeful, but is that really fair for college-graduates with 20 years experience in light of the 30% profits the companies were raking in just a few years ago? To put that in perspective, let's look at a profit margins in other industries: Convenience store distribution companies, 1.4% Wal Mart, 3.3%; Oracle, 24%. At Oracle, though, expect to start off making about $44K. If you want to make that as a newspaper reporter, strap in for about 10 years.

If that's not enough, the long hours, the low pay, the bitterness have bred a culture that is, at best, unpleasant. Would you want to work with these people? Or in a place like this? With people who can't move forward?

It's not as if these firms have been regularly reinvesting these profits into the newsroom. I challenge anyone to show me a major media company that has consistently, for more than a decade:

1) Enthusiastically kept the newsroom up-to-date in the latest, most efficient technology, including keeping abreast of digital developments and updating both hardware and software.

2) Readily and willingly invested in training for employees other than mandated HR courses and sales. (What are jobless print journalists who were still using Windows 2000 going to do now?!)

3) Mentored and promoted people regardless of race or gender to the highest levels of newsroom hierarchy with the same fervor they showed when demanding reporters find a minority to quote.

4) Regularly evaluated compensation to make certain all employees were paid fairly not only in-house, but in comparison to similar industry positions both nationally and locally.

5) Treated creative, talented people with anything other than barely concealed contempt.

Long ago, one of my bosses told me that staffers were "like lightbulbs" If one left, you just screwed in another.

Screwed being the operative word.

Twitter: 'It's the Internet'

2009-06-16T12:49:35-04:00

Dave Winer and Jay Rosen on Rebooting The News No. 13 at 12:55:

WINER: So we've reached this conclusion that almost everything needs to hook into Twitter. It just does.

ROSEN: Because?

WINER: Why? Why? You're asking a leading question, why don't you just answer it?

ROSEN: (Laughs) Well, I wanna know what you think!

WINER: OK, so it's not a leading question. Well... why? Because it just does, Jay. That's just the way the world is right now. Twitter is the backbone. It's the messaging system. It's the... it's the ... the... It's the Internet. It is.

I mean, I was saying this in an interview I did earlier today on this podcast. It's that we've stuffed the entire Internet into 140 characters, and it does not fit, OK?

(laughter)

But we're making it fit, by hook or by crook.

ROSEN: Here's the way I would say it: We need everyone in the new system, and Twitter is the way we can get everyone into the new system.

Live from Tehran

2009-06-16T10:15:14-04:00

Photos of the post-election protests in Tehran via .faramarz's Flickrstream, which of course I found via Twitter.

Want to help? And no, I don't mean by giving money: I mean, would you like to participate in the worldwide effort to support the protesters, get the news out despite the censorship and frustrate Iran's security forces? Then read thiis.

The 21st Century in Retrospect

2009-06-15T15:30:07-04:00

(...joined at 21:37...)

ALLENDE: From a conceptual basis, then, what year marks the beginning of the 21st century?

WANG: I don't know that I could pick one year that encompasses the entire shift. But I think we can definitely state the exact moment that the 20th century ended.

ALLENDE: Yes?

WANG: Nov. 4, 2008, and it ended sometime between the moment Barrack Obama stepped onto the stage at Grant Park and his first words to the nation as president-elect.

ALLENDE: So it was a political shift?

WANG: Not at all. It was a shift in possibility. The 20th century was predicated on material possibility, which included a mechanistic sense of weight and inevitability. A president like Obama wasn't supposed to be possible, because people believed the message that "the system" would never allow it. Electorates, agencies, corporations -- people understood them to be flawed, but people accepted the inhumane and inefficient authority of these institutions out of an ambient belief that high levels of friction, waste and corruption were inevitable in human society.

ROBERTSON: One could argue, then, that the Bush Era was the highest expression of that belief (laughter).

WANG: Many have, but in all seriousness, I think the 21st century owes Bush a debt of gratitude. His administration created a credibility vacuum that Obama and others filled with possibility. And I don't mean that in terms of political policy, but in the awakening that occurred within the 2010s. The advances of that decade were all based on knowledge that was available during the Bush Era, but little was manifested because 20th century culture was so convinced that the rules of possibility were strictly limited.

ALLENDE: Why do you think that was, Dr. Singh?

SINGH: Ted may disagree with me, but I think the most important moment in the transition was the failure of 20th century mass-media systems around the end of that first decade. Mass-media at the time perpetuated cultural expectations of disappointment, division and dissension. It functioned as a massive brake on social change, and you really begin to see its demise with the Obama election.

ALLENDE: Do you disagree, Dr. Erickson?

ERICKSON: To a degree. Would that media system have collapsed without the fall of the global banking system between 2008-11? But I'm an economist, so that's my perspective. We're probably arguing a chicken-or-the-egg question.

ALLENDE: (Confused) A... chicken? (inaudible) What?

ERICKSON: (Laughs) Well, that's a good example. There was a cliché of 20th century thought that posed the question "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" That's a meaningless question today.

SINGH: Its like an 17th century person asking "Which came first, the rain or the frogs?" but that's the way paradigm shifts work.The idea that consciousness organizes biology seemed anti-scientific to most 20th century thinkers, even though there was science that supported the principle available around that time.

ALLENDE: Why wasn't it more widely accepted?

SINGH: I think you have to begin by imagining how different a mass-mediated society really is. A few of us are old enough to remember it, but to the younger generations it's just alien. You have this 20th century paradigm that was materialistic, Newtonian, and mass-media was the cultural mechanism that enforced it. So I don't think it's any coincidence that the burst of advancement that created what we think of as 21st century culture takes place after the fall of the mass-media economy. You just don't get the explosion of progress that occurred in the 2010s and 2020s without the weakening of that mass-media identity.

ALLENDE: What else would a time-traveler from 2009 struggle to grasp?

ROBERTSON: Everything.

ERICKSON: Remember, in the years before The Great Recession, financial regulations around the world were generally far more concerned with establishing methods by which market players could unilaterally extract value from the network. Preserving the integrity of the economic network that created their wealth in the first place wasn't even part of their thinking. These weren't stupid people: They were simply working within a limited context.

SINGH: And given 20th century ideas about the nature of what they called "the material world," is it any wonder that people saw economics as one issue and media as another, politics over here and science over there...

COLBERT: Not to mention religion...

SINGH: Exactly.

COLBERT: One of the main reasons that science was so slow to embrace the controversial discoveries of the late 20th century was the overwhelming fear that the alternative to Darwin was creationism, that if physics explored the mechanics of consciousness it was somehow searching for God. So even though there was evidence that the phenome and the genome were in constant conversation, that evolution involved an exchange of information between our DNA and the environment, scientists were not able to investigate that evidence because of the cost to their careers and reputations.

WANG: They would have lost their funding.

ROBERTSON: So in many cases the most interesting evidence was essentially ignored, even though it pointed the way toward solutions society desperately needed.

SINGH: It's not just true in science. During The Great Recession, even as the banking system and the old political-media control systems collapsed, the companies that funded those systems were incapable of considering alternatives that could have saved them. It's generally forgotten today, but in 2009 the newspaper companies that controlled much of the nation's informational infrastructure actually colluded to force the public to pay for freely available information.The semantic economy was wide open to them, but as we know today, you literally cannot see what you cannot first imagine.

ALLENDE: I guess I keep coming back to this in different ways, but why was progress so difficult for them?

WANG: Because you're coming at this question as a citizen of a semantic society. We expect the information we need will be properly contextualized and delivered to us in useful ways. Your idea of "research" bears little resemblance to what it meant for scientists or journalists at the turn of the century. In their day, it literally required searching. And then when you got some information, you could easily spend as long or longer trying to determine whether it was any good, or even where it originated.

SINGH: The concept that really stumps my students is "mainstream." And it doesn't matter whether the topic is science or culture or media, in the 20th century context a thing was either in the mainstream, and therefore known and viable, or out of the mainstream and therefore obscure and suspect. They can't quite believe that an entire society functioned by what was essentially a rigged popularity contest, but it begins to make sense when you realize just how many institutions benefited from excluding all but a few possibilities.

ROBERTSON: Right. Limit the options to what you're selling.

WANG: It wasn't one system that was flawed. Twentieth century thought was a series of mutually reinforcing feedback loops that kept society mired in a Newtonian universe a century after the advent of special relativity and 80 years after the discoveries of Heisenberg and Schrödinger. So in a sense, trying to figure out what act or discovery began the 21st century is a 20th century errand. There were new ideas at play in multiple disciplines simultaneously, each was held back by convention, and once the change began toward an integrated paradigm it occurred rapidly and with enormous power.

COLBERT: That's true, but Iet's not lose sight of the fact that the origins of 21st century culture are all scientific advances with technological applications: Nonlocality, self-assemblying biotechnology, the Zero Point Field, all of these things became part of our identity when they stopped being theories and became tangible parts of our daily lives. Quantum physics was just quasi-mystical bullshit to most people until it started showing up in consumer technology.

ROBERTSON: One hundred years ago, you wouldn't even be considered human.

COLBERT: Correct. And what I'm saying is that we didn't get to these ideas via narrative, but by science: Good, hard, grinding science. Am I an artificial intelligence made by humans or a non-biological extension of human consciousness? And the answer is, I was built, people experienced me as human, and the cultural shift followed accordingly.

WANG: But, now Stephen, that's a perfect example of how Lakshimi may be right. To say that narrative had nothing to do with those discoveries misses her point about media. Those discoveries were based on evidence that was available before the rise of networked media. Why didn't they become acceptable and "mainstream" sooner? Because we're a quorum-sensing species. It took networked media to provide the necessary environmental signals that allowed science the permission to venture into these areas. How many years did it take for society -- for science -- to accept our understanding of something as simple as gravity? And when that finally did happen, did it occur because of science or because the network moved the proper theory into the window of possibility?

COLBERT:You're seriously contending that networked media enabled the Second Scientific Revolution? Is that what you're saying?

WANG: I'm saying that, to borrow a metaphor from physics, the two subjects are entangled.

COLBERT: Which means everything from fusion to projected consciousness, all the fundamental technologies that drive our modern economy, all of these advances exist today because of ... media?

SINGH: And vice-versa.

WANG: Mass media was controlled. Networked media is often manipulated, but control doesn't scale. In a mass-mediated society, scientists had to be careful how they discussed science in public, but with the rise of networked media, citizens were free to learn about and talk about science in ways that scientists themselves could not. That affected the political climate, which affected funding, which provided its own feedback loop with science and media, which accelerated the cycle. And so on.

SINGH: Neither begat the other. But when each became an open system, each enhanced the other.

ALLENDE: Open systems were a 20th century invention, correct?

WANT: Perhaps, but they weren't really deployed until the 21st. Open Source software development is the classic example. Before then, all systems that involved value were essentially closed systems, and extraction meant that open systems, like fisheries, suffered from the Tragedy of the Commons. So you had all these closed systems, and the nature of closed systems is that they're competitive.

ERICKSON: Whereas in open systems, wealth is created by cooperation. In the 20th century, that was called "hippie economics," or confused with communism.

ROBERTSON: Or socialism.

ERICKSON: Or socialism. So while I agree with our esteemed specialists in media and science, I would contend that this shift -- from economic competition to economic cooperation -- is actually the genesis point for 21st century culture. Because let's face it: If Google could have made more money by not sharing its Wave technology, others would have happily continued not sharing their products. Post-capitalist theory won because it was practical, not because it was pretty.

The great irony is that post-capitalism is ultimately the expression of a mature capitalist system. We enjoy flexible, non-corrupt entities today not because our parents and grandparents thought they would be cool, but because flexible, non-corrupt entities wound up making more money. Why do open systems win? Because closed systems can't adapt quickly enough.

COLBERT: You don't see that as an outgrowth of science? Because it's essentially an understanding of society and economics that's modeled on our understanding of the way bacteria exist within a colony.

ERICKSON: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

WANG: Ha!

ERICKSON: And it certainly doesn't hurt that our economic thinking is reinforced by an economic abundance that our ancestors simply couldn't imagine. The industrialized world didn't develop a stable food supply until the mid-20th century. We didn't develop a stable global economic system until the mid-21st. Our parents and grandparents made all their decisions based on scarcity.

WANG: Scarcity is a self-fulfilling prophecy of closed systems.

COLBERT: Yes, but you don't just make the leap and arrive there. You don't plant an old-growth climax-forest ecosystem. You arrive there over time.

WANG: You progress arithmetically until you hit the knee of the curve and then your results are logarithmic. We're all standing on the shoulders of giants. That's a technology known as "civilization."

COLBERT: Absolutely. Although if that were strictly true we'd have hit The Singularity 54 years ago.

SINGH: And immediately turned into golden, flying unicorns. That was my plan at the time, anyway (laughter).

WANG: The Technological Singularity didn't occur as a quasi-magical event, but I think a time-traveler from 2009 would look at the world 90 years later and think our technology is pretty damn magical.

ALLENDE: Let's say for the moment that the work that's going on now with 4th dimensional consciousness projection is approved in the next quarter. If you could project only one thought back to your ancestors, to help them get through the transition from the 20th to the 21st century way of thinking, what would that thought be?

ROBERTSON: I'd tell them to stop waiting for the Chicago Cubs to win a pennant. After 191 years, it's pretty obvious that there's something other than baseball at play there (laughter).

WANG: I think that's easy. I'd tell them to stop being so afraid.

ALLENDE: But those were scary times.

WANG: All the more reason.

Criticism: Why it sucks

2009-06-03T14:31:22-04:00

I write reviews of plays for the local alt-weekly, and I do so more out of compulsion to go places and do things and write about them than anything else. Tonight I'll watch a play. Tomorrow morning I'll write a review of it. And that might just be the last time I do it, given the direction my life is heading and my thoughts on criticism in general.

There are basically two functions of criticism, and they've always been united within the form:

The critic is responsible to the audience and should honestly and intelligently answer the question: "Should I devote time and money to seeing this?"
The critic has a responsibility to the artist -- and to art itself -- to engage in this vaguely defined, ongoing public dialog about art, quality and standards.

Great critics -- and there have been critical essays and even reviews that I would consider to be "great" -- are artists themselves. But I'm not a great critic. I'm functionally an amateur critic who has been learning on the job. I started in the 1990s with book reviews, but for the past few years I've been required to write critical things (positive and negative -- remember that "criticism" as a literary form also includes praise) about live, local performances, and I'm here to tell you that writing about people you can see is fundamentally a different beast than covering artists who work elsewhere.

From this experience arise multiple perplexing questions. No. 1? How does living in an age where all observers have a platform to publish their opinions affect the context of professional criticism? As in: If I have a big, branded, for-profit distribution channel, and I hire you to review something, what standards of quality are implied? What is the critic's standing? What are her goals? What makes his review good or bad?

I've tried to engage critics in this discussion, but they are singularly disinterested. Too meta. Too pointless. Too... threatening. Where's the win in this for them, particularly if their bosses don't care?

So let me offer these simple standards, and they begin with one concept: Let's split the standard "review" into two entirely separate forms.

Standard No. 1: Consumer reviews
If you intend to write for the consumer, then understand that there isn't one consumer, but many. There isn't one valid standard of taste, there are virtually endless standards. With that in mind, it's possible to talk subjectively about the audience to which a work is intended and then describe the work in terms of its success within those narrow definitions. I enjoyed an opera three years ago. I enjoyed Superbad more recently. I probably wouldn't recommend either to the other's general audience.

How should one communicate such a review? Well, not as an essay -- which remains the default form for criticism of the arts. I'd rather see it done in a more structured way, allowing easier comparisons to other reviewers' thoughts. And quality? It depends on accuracy in terms of understanding what one saw, placing it in the context of its genre and audience, and making intelligent, formatted comparisons. Subjective? Absolutely. But it's better if one can see the terms of the subjective judgment. The spirit of hypertext gives us that freedom.

And what about negative reviews? Well, if you think something is patently offensive and a waste of time and money for ANY audience, then by-gawd say so. Just let us see where you're coming from in your online writing (perhaps a link to a critic's personal standards of judgment?)

Standard No. 2: The ideas essay
The greatest problem I have in writing reviews is that most of the art I witness is neither great nor awful. It's typically somewhere in the middle, and encountering it just makes you want to have a nice meal and watch a little late-night TV and go to bed.

I have nothing interesting to say about art like that, but I say it anyway and I try to make those statements as interesting as possible for the reader. And in that sense, I'm not accurately reflecting what I saw: I'm making it more interesting than I thought it was.

So what if, instead of writing narrative reviews of things that didn't elicit strong reactions, reviewers merely filed formatted consumer reviews and moved on? I saw some quite nice little performances last week that deserved this treatment and nothing more, because that's all that aspired to be.

What if reviewers filed essay-form, artistic reviews only on those occasions when the work inspired strong feelings or interesting ideas? In which case, one could judge the critic by the quality of his or her ideas, not merely the ability to reflect the original work.

People say they want feedback, and many do: privately. Rare is the artist who honestly seeks and appreciates public feedback that says less than stellar things. In many cases, these artists are struggling and learning and making do under horrible conditions: Do they really need to endure the essay-styled pontificating of "professional" reviewers who are no more qualified to cover a classical concert than they are a monster truck rally?

The existing system isn't really good for anybody -- not artists, not audiences and not even the critics. Sure would be nice if we could do better.

The newspaper suicide pact

2009-06-03T13:06:39-04:00

Primarily written Friday night at O'Hare International. Lightly edited, with links added today. --dc

I think I'll remember last week as the moment when I finally knew, with a certainty approaching fatigue, that the newspaper industry – the business and passion that both shaped and warped me over the past 20 years – had chosen ritual suicide. The choice appears grimly reached and irrevocable.

The issue is “paid content.” That's the generic term. I consider it a euphemism for an entire suite of frustrations and furies that have been boiling out of my former profession since its once-invincible business model began its final slide to the deep in 2008. On the surface, paid content is the reasonable idea that people should have to pay for the professionally produced content they consume. Its core, however, is a post-rational demand that consumers abandon their habits of the past decade in favor of new behaviors intended to restore media companies to the profitability ordained to them by God Almighty.

Does it matter that this is an idea with a known, recent history of failure? Or that human beings have no intention of paying for news they've always received for free? Does it matter that we already know a return to the paywall-era of the early 2000s will cost these legacy media companies money they will never recoup? No, no and no.

There has been no shortage of writing debunking this, but what of it? The audience that counts in this case – media company executives – decided this future sometime earlier this spring. All that remains now are the details and marketing terms: “Paywalls” are out; “Pay Windows” are in. The wall must be easy to use, but it must also be “permeable.” And so on.

Confused? Don't be. Your newspaper overlords believe they can sell you their content if they can just get everybody on the same page and nail the sales pitch this time. They're looking for the magic words, not the underlying logic (the tricky part? Doing all this without breaking federal anti-trust law).

This is folly, of course. Even MIT Technology Review Editor and Publisher ~~Justin~~ Jason Pontin concluded that news and opinion must be given away to the aggregators, and that was in an essay advancing the case for paid content.

Pontin comes from the magazine field, which suffers from similar woes but is a fundamentally different beast than the general bundling machine we call the American metro newspaper. All sorts of content can be sold online quite profitably (you can read my thoughts on this here and here), but trying to force people to pay for generic news content because your advertising rates have dropped so low they no longer cover the cost of your operations? Have fun selling that one, boys.

And sell it they are. This spring and early summer has been a continuous parade of naked emperors and specious arguments. There's the Cable TV argument. The iTunes argument. They've argued the Watchdog Case and the Piracy Case. And as the combined knowledge of the network ground each of these quickly down to dust, the salespeople moved on to the next one. Did the "blame the bloggers" approach flop? OK: Blame Google.

The worst argument I've heard so far came from Walter Isaacson, the former editor of TIME who got this party started in February with his cover story “How to Save Your Newspaper.” His paid-content call rallied the panicked executives who are presiding over the cascading failure of our industry, yet as Isaacson addressed the crowd at the “From Gatekeepers to Infovalets” conference on May 27th, he seemed almost apologetic: We can't sell much of our content, he said. We'll have to do it wisely. Isaacson isn't a stupid man. He sounded to me as much a prisoner of his words as their author.

But here's the terrible argument I mentioned: In contending that the paid-content movement was not so much about revenue per se, Isaacson used this alternate rationalization: Paid content models are necessary “to protect creativity.”

That's a pretty stunning statement, even in the favorable context of trying to save an industry in which people are compensated by middlemen for their published work. And so when I got my turn at the mic, I rose and asked him: What profit margins will these paid-content models have to generate in order to protect creativity?

Isaacson never responded to that question, unless you call staring at me with a horrified expression a response. Instead, Merrill Brown, a senior strategist at paywall-startup Journalism Online LLC, rose in his defense. It's not about a profit margin, he said...and... well... then he said some other things (you can watch it here, although I don't know that listening would lead to a more accurate paraphrase). He did eventually concede that stockholders might have certain profit expectations.

Yes. Expectations like 20 and 30 percent profits.

So can we finally, finally call this thing what it is? Quality journalism is expensive, and to the extent that it provides a public good, we will find ways to fund it. But top-heavy, poorly run, arrogant-to-the-bitter-end media companies? This is their crisis, not our crisis, and it certainly isn't about journalism.

In other words: If Isaacson wants to join us in protecting and expanding creativity and quality, welcome aboard, Walter! Because we can do THAT for an awful lot less than what it's going to cost to bail out our brain-dead media companies on behalf of shareholders and executives.

Like a lot of my compatriots, I started studying new media options with the intention of saving newspapers, not destroying them. As recently as last week, in my secret thoughts I doubted my dire conclusions. These are enormous, powerful companies, representing billions of dollars of assets. They would survive. They had to.

But clearly they don't. In choosing to go backward instead of forward into the now, these leaders are sealing their fates. My wife, upon hearing my news from the conference, predicted the companies that go all-in on paywalls will be out of business within six months of their implementation. I don't think that's rash (although, to be clear: I don't think ALL these companies will go into bankruptcy, and I stand by my prediction that the "unique nationals "have an interesting future, despite the fact that The NY Times is helping pull the paid-content bandwagon)..

Consider InDenver Times: The online-only startup launched with a plan to fund its operations via 50,000 paid subscriptions. They got 3,000. That's 6 percent of their goal.

It's actually worse than that. Newspapers that are turning to paywall plans today are gambling on a risky revenue stream that even the experts aren't predicting will provide a replacement to their lost advertising revenues (their biggest financial problem is the rapid decline in advertising rates, not the slow decline in print circulation). It's a "well, we've got to do SOMETHING" solution, not a logical, do-the-math solution. And since since most media companies are owned by shareholders, the resulting loss of confidence could be catastrophic.

What will these media executives do when that reality hits them? When these debt-burdened chains, stripped of journalistic talent by a decade of profiteering, their web traffic reduced by 60 percent by their paid-content follies, their pockets emptied by the cost of the proprietary paywall systems offered by Journalism Online LLC and other opportunistic vendors, what will they do?

Will they buck up and go back out into the fray with fresh ideas and leadership? Or will they fold, casting bitter eulogies to their own imagined glories as they exit the stage?

The chances of them adapting well to another failure are dubious. Remember, these are the same people who have acted as if there were no other options, even when those options were practically gift-wrapped for them. As if Newspaper Next never happened. As if commerce hubs and C3 and all the interesting, exciting ideas that are practically everywhere today do not exist.

They don't get it. They don't want to get it. And in many cases, they're literally paid not to get it.

America's journalism infrastructure – from corporate giants to non-profit foundations like the American Press Institute and the Newspaper Association of America – is funded by dying companies. So when you hear about efforts to save newspapers (and, by extension, journalism), understand that answers that don't return the possibility of double-digit profits and perpetual top-down control aren't even considered answers. They're not even considered.

They'll do anything to survive... so long as it doesn't involve change. Consequently, for many companies the alternatives to paywalls are no longer options because it's too late in the day.

But maybe I'm looking at this wrong. Maybe paid content is good for journalism because it's going to hasten the fall of this terrible system. It's going to create a vacuum in which innovators will be able to make a difference. Maybe the best thing these old media companies can do today is fail quickly.

This was their choice, not ours. Wave to them as they leave, and try to remember what they once were, not what they've become.

(Editor's note: Thank you to David Muir for DMing me a heads-up that I'd called Jason Pontin "Justin." D'OH! -- dc)

A university for The Singularity

2009-06-02T14:04:00-04:00

Warning: This TED player can be buggy.

Priceless comment of the week

2009-05-25T11:58:29-04:00

...And then comes the main point, people. When are you going to start listening to me and others like me (Glen Beck, for example).

This is a left wing reporter working for a left wing publication. This means that everything said and the motive for same is suspect. In this case, it's the common left wing error of not doing one's homework and just jumping on (or trying to create) an emotional bandwagon that ignores FACTS. This is the same mental error EXACTLY that we are seeing in the debate about Gitmo, where the retarded left wingers are finding out that their kindergarten fantasy about magically closing Gitmo has MAJOR LEAGUE problems, to say the least.<

Most of us graduated from Kindergarten a long time ago. Isn't it time to DISMISS all the left wingers who haven't in disgrace from public life and the news media? Isn't it time to IGNORE them and make it such that they simply can not compel our attention and concern?
--Commenter "postman01" at Postandcourier.com on a column by Ken Burger about what could be done with the ships at Patriot's Point.

I'm not sure which thought is funnier: The notion that The P&C is a "left wing publication" or the idea that someone would voluntarily compare himself to Glenn Beck ... in public!

Keep it up, postman01.

Sincerely,

Liberals Everywhere

Today's game: Predict Vick

2009-05-21T14:08:41-04:00

I had a bit of luck last year, projecting the Jets as the Packers' most likely trading partner for Brett Favre long before the team was even considered to be in the running. But what about Michael Vick? That's trickier.

Let's be clear about something, though: Vick will not only play in the NFL, he's likely to start some games in 2009.

There are two categories of teams to consider in the Vickstakes: Teams that don't have a QB of his abilities and teams that don't need him right away but could fit him into their plans.

I think there will be several teams in the running, but only one team that offers the right situation both for the player and the organization.

Teams without a 2009 QB with Vick's ability
Vikings, Bills, 49ers, Jaguars, Panthers, Dolphins, Bucs, Rams, Lions, Browns, Jets
First, let's remove the Lions, Jets, Bills and Browns from this list: Each has a young QB that management wants to develop, and Vick is not the guy you want on the bench.

Most people would also add the Broncos to this list, but trust me: Kyle Orton is the least of the Broncos' worries this season. Another close call is Jacksonville with David Garrard, who followed an up '07 with a down '08. I've included them here because Vick's game is so close to Garrard's that even if he didn't start, he'd be a solid No. 2.

So the teams at the top of this category are the Vikings, 49ers, Bucs and Rams.

If I were the Vikings I'd swear off Favre and pick up Vick... but that's just not likely. Memories of The Party Boat are still too fresh in Minneapolis, or at least they are with Vikings ownership, and it's pretty clear that Favre and the Norsemen have a mutual man-crush thing going on. So even though there's logic here, I'm taking them off the list for now.

The Bucs are a warm-weather team with a new coaching staff and three mediocre veteran QBs. Vick would have a good chance of taking the job here, but somehow I just don't see this as a likely match. The Panthers are another NFC South team with similar prospects, but they're a conservative franchise from a conservative town, and even if they were to make a run at Vick, I just don't think he's going to be all hot to visit Atlanta once every year.

The 49er's QB situation is awful, and Mike Singletary is the kind of coach who will be confident that he can redeem a hard-case like Vick. A landing here would make a lot of sense, and yet... well, somehow an East Coast dog killer just doesn't fit the mold for this franchise. Does that matter? Yeah, I think so.

Which brings us to the Rams. This team has been hovering around the league basement for three or four years now, and Marc Bulger is best-suited to be someone's veteran backup at this stage of his career. The only competition is Kyle Boller, so it's not as if there's anybody you can cite as "waiting in the wings."

Vick would have some weapons at his disposal in St. Louis, and let's not forget that this is a dome team in a weak division. I can't think of any particular organizational bias against Vick, and the more I think about this one, the more logical it seems.

Finally, the Dolphins. They've got a veteran pocket passer (Pennington), a young "QB of the future" (Henne) and a rookie (Pat White) who was drafted as a "Wildcat" QB. With its strange commitment to the Wildcat as it's change-up set, the Dolphins offer Vick a chance to play plenty of downs even if he doesn't "start" at QB. Imagine a Wildcat with Vick under center... or split out wide... or filling the halfback slot.

It's hard for me to put him in Miami, but you can all but bet that their people will be talking to his people as soon as he's reinstated.

Teams that might want to fit him in
Patriots, Cowboys, Eagles, Titans, Redskins, Seahawks
These teams have decent or better-than-decent starting QBs, yet you can almost feel the spittle drooling down the faces of their front-office staffers.

The Patriots need a backup and being arrogant bastards they'll be sure they could bring Vick around. It won't work, but you could almost see it happening. Almost.

The Eagles just aren't sold on an aging Donovan McNabb, despite that whole "kiss-and-make-up"' thing last season. But can you imagine the Philly fans and how they'd get on Vick after the first INT? No way Vick wants to land there.

The Titans were supposed to be cruising along in the Vince Young era until he went psycho on them and left the team with Kerry Collins, who doesn't have much left in that arm. Can you imagine Young and Vick competing? Boggles the mind. And I suspect Jeff Fisher will decide he just doesn't want to go down that alley.

The Redskins and the Cowboys are owner-driven teams, and both of these men love shiny new toys. Vick is neither new nor shiny, but he's likely to look that way to Synder and Jones. Both teams have talented young QBs, but that won't stop these megalomaniacs from making a run at a star.

And finally, the Seattle Seahawks are a dysfunctional team run by new HC Jim Mora Jr., who was the absolutely awful HC of the Atlanta Falcons during Vick's hey-day. Will the Seahawks attempt to sign Vick as Hasselbeck's "backup?" In a word, yes.

The Most Likely Contenders
Miami will want him... but will want him to play a "slash" position that may not interest him. Mora will want him as the Seahawks' backup ... but Paul Allen may not, and Hasselbeck isn't going to take kindly to Mora playing footsies with his former Atlanta QB.

To me, that says the answer to this riddle will be St. Louis. Vick will get highly publicized feelers from Seattle, Miami and Washington, but will ultimately spurn all those to sign a two-year deal with the Rams. He'll begin the season as Bulger's backup, but he'll be starting by November, and he'll likely sign a relatively generous contract extension in the off-season.

St. Louis offers Vick a unique set of circumstances, not the least of which being the relative obscurity of the Midwest. Vick isn't equipped to survive in a mass-media city. Second, the expectations for the Rams are extremely low. That's good, too. Third, Bulger is a fading veteran who can "win" the camp battle and give Vick plenty of time to shake the rust off his game.

Steve Spaguolo is a defensive-minded HC in his first year, and he just hired Pat Shurmur, the former QB coach of The Eagles, to run this offense. Shurmur will know a thing or two about mobile, athletic quarterbacks based on his McNabb experience, so he'll have a pretty good idea on how to get the best out of Vick. If Vick works out, then the Rams will strike "QB" off their to-do list. If he doesn't, they'll be picking high again next year anyway.

Don't expect to see the Rams at the front of the Michael Vick story in June. But don't be surprised when he holds up Rams' jersey in mid-July. They'll get him because they represent a clean break and a fresh start for a player who certainly needs both.

Lessons from the affaire de Jarre

2009-05-20T06:32:18-04:00

Last week, as many if not most of you know, a number of news outlets reported that Irish student Shane Fitzgerald had made up quotations, attributing them to French composer Maurice Jarre upon his death and publishing them on Wikipedia. While the Wikipedia community removed the false quotations rather quickly, given the lack of grounded citation, several prominent newspapers included at least one of these creative quotations in obituaries of Jarre.

While I found the story interesting, in the large scheme of things, and given the innocuousness of the attributed quotation, the story should have been but a small blip on my radar. In my larger scholarly and pedagogical community, however, this was rather monumental news for many people to the degree that Wikipedia has become something of a boogeyman in the rather predictable conversations about the laziness of “today’s generation of students.” In effect, Wikipedia has become the whipping post that teachers turn to each time they begin another round of cursing the laziness of students.

Indeed, this is true to such a degree that one often finds syllabi with pseudolegalize, warning students away from utilizing Wikipedia as a source. Instead, the syllabi reminds the student, research must carefully be tied to properly vetted sources (e.g., peer reviewed journals, or, in the case of contemporary events, national newspapers). University libraries run seminar after seminar, explaining to first year students that they must learn to differentiate between legitimate and nonlegitimate sources for their research. In short, the most positive thing one will ever found said of Wikipedia is that it might, on occasion, given other sources, be used for deep background information.

Hence, the affaire de Jarre was the cause of some level of minihysteria in informal conversation and online discussions amongst teachers who yet again pointed to Wikipedia as the example par excellence of the downfall of standards in student research and writing. In conversation after conversation, numerous teachers noted that this was surely the sign—if we needed another—that students should never turn to Wikipedia as a legitimate source in their research. If only “we” could get students to do real research, skipping Wikipedia, we would be on solid grounds.

To be blunt, such claims totally missed the point of the story, even on its most overt grounds.

The Wikipedia community, I want to stress, reportedly corrected Fitzgerald’s invented quotes quickly after he published them. Instead, it was the newspaper reporters who wrote the stories, and the “legitimate research source” newspapers that printed the stories, who were slow to correct the story (when they did) and who were even slower to apologize, who should be seen as at fault here. Think about it: if a student were writing a paper about Jarre on the day after Fitzgerald made up his quotation, the student would NOT have found it on Wikipedia but would have found it in archived newspapers and in online versions of the papers for a fairly long time period (potentially forever, the story goes, if Fitzgerald hadn’t gone public with his experiment). In short, Wikipedia would have proven to be the better, more accurate, source.

While the ultimate story should have taught the lesson that teachers should begin warning students that we live in a very different world of research, that new strategies of verification and attribution need to be designed, all we heard was the same stale moral—Wikipedia is bad.

Ultimately, this affair should bring up at least two questions. The first, and a large one that I’m not prepared to answer, is how we indeed will rethink standards of research within the academy (and elsewhere). If we aren’t having students conduct hardcore archival work, we are going to need to find more interesting and compelling ways to discuss research, and discuss how to judge the accuracy of “facts.” Consider this: if the Wikipedia community had not removed the quotation in the first two days, Fitzgerald would have been able to ground the quotation by citing newspapers who were using his Wikipedia entry without citing it. We do have a problem here, and it’s one we need to think hard about. But it’s not Wikipedia’s fault; it has more to do with the general medium in which we all now swim.

This brings me to what I think is the most interesting question. The real bugaboo here is not the problem of research but the fact that so many teachers could read the initial story and place all of the blame on Wikipedia, ignoring the problematic behavior of the newspaper reporters and publishers. Why, I think we must ask, are teachers holding such a strong interpretive frame that they miss the point?

To be fair, it’s partially understandable to the degree that, for years, we were taught to trust grounded research from academics, and for years, we were told not to trust non-peer reviewed research; ultimately, the interpretive frame we use to read the Fitzgerald story is one we refuse to let go, one we hold an interest in; it legitimizes our own research, our own writing.

Rather than a reiteration of that paradigm, the case refuted it. And no one noticed. So, I wonder, what is it going to take to teach the teachers themselves that the rules are changing, that wikis are not the immediate and obvious problem, that we cannot rely on our own assumptions. If the rules are changing, and our assumptions are not, what are we teaching?

A new form of writing

2009-05-18T15:58:00-04:00

We all learned to write in more or less the same way: Beginning, middle, end; Subject, predicate, object; Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Beyond consisting of three items, each of these approaches shares another common theme: Inclusion. Everything necessary to understand the point is expressed explicitly on the page.

But when you write for the Web as you'd write for print, you write too long. You waste the reader's time explaining what she already knows.

When we write for the Web, we should use the Web's strengths to our advantage. This begins with thinking a little bit deeper about how information is constructed, because the Web can offer writers the benefit of both clarity and brevity.

This post is an example: If you already recognized the concepts I used to build my argument, you're almost done reading. If you didn't, you can follow the links and read my explanations. And if you follow each back to its beginning, you'll find some definitive statements. Referencing one definitive statement for any concept or fact is an idea software engineers call "The DRY Principle," and I believe it's important to the future of both journalism and civilization.

Learning to write this way is a bit like playing three-dimensional chess, but it also reminds me of The Glass Bead Game. Sadly, writers today lack the technological tools and display conventions that would fully support and reward the required effort. But I suspect the ideas demonstrated here could lead us toward new ways of thinking and communicating that are far better adapted to the world we now inhabit.

Notes.

Image: This post as a rough semantic outline.Click to see full-size.