No Zombie Media

NewTeeVee Live: Reinventing Television

noreply@blogger.com (Marie Drennan) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:44:00 +0000

On Wednesday, November 14, everyone who's anyone in the new-media world gathered at the Mission Bay Conference Center to talk about the future of online video. What will be the relationship between TV and online entertainment? What will the new business models look like, and where will the revenue come from? Will IPTV or broadband win? The coffee was strong, and so were the opinions (the venture capitalists were particularly snarky, go figure) — but there was one thing everyone could agree on:

No one really knows how it's all going to work.

And no one minded saying so. Mika Salmi, president of global digital media for MTV Networks, kicked things off by revealing that he was invited to speak about "the next big thing in new media," to which his answer was:

"I'm trying to figure it out."

He posited that there is no "next big thing," but rather "lots of little things" that evolve and converge — which nicely sums up the main problem on everyone's mind: advertisers don't believe those little things (and the fragmented audiences they attract) add up. They like having 11 million TV viewers sitting down to watch, all at the same time, all looking at one screen that doesn't also have e-mail and MySpace and shoes.com competing for attention. They're not going to redirect their budgets to online media until someone can guarantee them comparable access to viewers. This is why there's no profit yet in online video; even YouTube is losing money. The big-brand advertisers won't bite.

"They just don't get it."

That was the second thing everyone agreed on, including those grouchy VCs: advertisers tend to think of new media as simply "TV on the internet." They try to repurpose their broad-appeal, 30-second TV ads and tack them on to 2-minute online videos — and then wonder why that nasty parody trashing their brand has got a million views, and suddenly no teenager alive will drink their soda.

What they don't understand is that new media isn't just TV on the internet; it's the entire ecosystem of discussion, sharing and participation that evolves around the original content. It's the same clip existing in one community as "World Cup Final Game" and in another as "Awesome Head-Butt" and in another as "Why the French Should Not Exist." It's being able to watch that video wherever I want to watch it — YouTube, my friend's blog, thefrenchmustdie.com — and downloading it and mashing it up into a music video so the world can enjoy seeing Zinedine Zidane pop Celine Dion in the sternum. Oh yes, and doing all of this for free.

OK, so maybe the advertisers are right to doubt that anyone can effectively find and reach such fragmented (and apparently very spoiled) niche audiences. No one at the conference claimed to have that figured out, but everyone seemed to agree on a few basic realities that will shape the new models:

1. Superdistribution (or supersyndication). Also known as the "go where the eyeballs are" rule: spread your content as widely as you can, to reach as many people as possible. Make it easy for people to download and share it. Mika Salmi estimated that only half of online video consumption originates with search; the rest is discovery — people finding your video via their friends' recommendations and shared playlists on social networking sites. This means you lose half your potential audience if you only serve those who come to your home site. Let the viewers find and share your content the way they want to, because this creates. . .

2. Community. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of websites propagating your content, fostering discussion of your content, spreading buzz about your content. You began by spray-firing the internet with your video; word spread, and now that fragmented audience has something discrete to coalesce around. In the panel titled Is There Money in Long-Tail Video?, tech-geeks and VCs agreed that while measurement is still difficult, it is possible to use "content as a proxy for demographic" in order to "sell audience sensibility." But that approach demands that you understand and respect. . .

3. Experience. Users desire and expect a particular overall experience, and choose their venues accordingly. Viewer A wants her Daily Show clips on a humor site with lots of other funny stuff flashing prettily, tempting her with so many delights that she hardly knows what to click next! Viewer B wants the same content in the safe haven of a sober political blog with carefully vetted links and accessible but unobtrusive archives. Surveys have consistently shown that viewers are willing to accept ad content that doesn't disrupt their overall experience — so Viewer A and Viewer B need different ads delivered to them. And they need different ones depending on whether they're viewing the content at work or at home, when they're hungry or when they're sleepy. And what if Viewer A lets hubby log on for a while? He's watching the same content on the same site, but the ads won't mean anything to him. Worse, they all need new ads every time they use content.

Whatever is a humble advertiser to do?

The word at the conference was: Work with a "third-party" advertising company, like VideoEgg or Federated Media — two of many that are starting up, making it their job to locate that fragmented audience, track and facilitate its development into a community, and deliver innovative ad content that flows seamlessly with content and complements the overall user experience.

This, clearly, will require a great deal of investment and innovation at every level: technology, business models and management, content development. Especially content development. Already, popular producers on MySpace and YouTube are being scouted and commissioned (yes, paid!) to create content that can also function as advertising. Product integration is, thus far, the predominant form, but everyone is looking for new approaches to try. New counts for a lot right now — which is why BECA students ought to be making stuff as fast as they can and distributing it as widely as they can, developing their style, building an audience. The money is out there, wanting a good reason to attach itself to online video. The upshot of the Cash for Content? panel was this: invest in content creators not to make money off of the content itself, but because good content adds value to the ecosystem, which keeps community growing (and presumably, eventually becoming profitable).

BTW, all of this talk about profit and "added value" and "content as proxy for demographic" did gross me out a bit. What about good content (good writing) for its own sake? Isn't that the point of taking back our mass media from the creativity-squelching corporate conglomerates?

I got to talk with several online-show creators and writers, and they all said that while there is some danger of new media collapsing, as TV has, under profit-pressure into bland uniformity, right now uniqueness is the highest value. In their opinion, creators have never had so much value or power, or so much potential to keep those and still get paid. It won't be true forever; it might not even be true for very long — but for now, the chaos is on our side.

All of the panel discussions were vlogged and are available at NewTeeVee. Here's a brief recap of each one, and a link to the video:

Mika Salmi (MTV Networks) thinks that online video drives, rather than "cannibalizes", TV viewing, and that "two-screen experiences" and virtual worlds (MTV Networks has 10 already, including Nicktropolis — go get yourself a Nickself!) will dominate media consumption.

Ralph de la Vega (AT&T Mobility) noted that iPhone users report viewing twice as much online video as they did pre-purchase. He sees this as a time of great creative freedom for artists, but also a time when it is even harder to get noticed. He also strongly encouraged flexible licencing.

Crossover Hits: Web Video Meets TV was a lively panel featuring Lisa Donovan, whose character-sketch-comedy podcast LisaNova drew weekly audiences of 500,000 and landed her a cast role on MadTV; Gary Wang, founder of Tudou (China's equivalent of YouTube); and Ty Ahmad-Taylor, VP of Product Development, MTV Networks, who enjoyed a round of applause when he said that "the best antidote to piracy is to make your stuff available," and that not doing so "equals saying STEAL ME!"

Is There Money in Long-Tail Video? Subtitled "Advertising tries to wrap its mind around web video." The moderator of this panel asked five video advertising CEOs to introduce themselves via haiku. Matt Sanchez of VideoEgg offered this pearl of poetic wisdom: "User control. Consumers can skip preroll." This was one of the most informative and surprising panels.

Cash for Content? was supposed to be a discussion of the role of venture capitalists in new media, but devolved into a smackdown between two of the guys, who seemed to know and hate each other. A lot. One of them thought that too much money was being thrown at online video companies (this was news to most people in the room), a lot of "froth and frivolous deals" that don't return investment. In short, new media is no place for VCs. Did I mention that none of these guys smiled or laughed once during the whole panel?

Search and Discovery Face Off pitted Team Search (index size matters!) against Team Discovery (relax and watch what your friends are watching!) — both claiming to have solved the "200 channels and nothing to watch" problem. Both sides had some very compelling things to say about "related video" features and the power of community tagging.

Scaling Profitability in Online Video. You can tell just by the title that this was a Microsoft presentation, right? And if you couldn't, Dan'l Lewin's blue-oxford-shirt-with-tan-khakis uniform would have given it away. He turned things over to his disturbingly excited underling, who gave a well rehearsed demonstration of a product suite that enables Home Shopping Network (and now, consumers like you and me) to make fully interactive video. I have to admit that the product, Silverlight, looked way cool.

The Network Makeover focused on infrastructure: the need for investment in and upgrading of; the possible business models around; and viable devices associated with. The panel featured some choice "IPTV vs. broadband" moments, and the words "company-free" were spoken without serious injury.

Featured Conversation: Steve Chen (YouTube) was a rapid-fire Q/A touching on all the big issues: copyright (hooray for audio and video recognition technology); profits ("In a matter of 24-30 months, if YouTube has 20 minutes of people’s attention, there is monetizability there" — yes, he said "monetizability"); ubiquity ("YouTube’s going to be on Mars" — yes, he really said that, too).

The New Studios and Talent Face Off continued in the spirit of the Search vs. Discovery panel, but with dirtier jokes (it was facilitated by Kent Nichols, creator/writer/head assassin, Ask-a-Ninja). Dina Kaplan, founder of Blip.tv, and Herb Scannel of Next New Networks had intriguing predictions about competing VCPs (video content providers) "banding together" to convince advertisers there's more to new media than videos of cats flushing toilets. The panel encouraged creators to embrace the idea that every show is its own brand, using the Sarah Silverman/Rocketboom "brand match" as an example.

Quincy Smith, CBS Interactive — you just have to see this crazy-genius guy for yourself. He's awesome. I honestly can't even begin to summarize him; you really, really, really should watch the video.

New Media Platforms featured another spirited debate, this time between Gina Bianchini, founder of Ning, and Henrik Werderlin, founder of Joost. Says Ning: online communities are self-organizing and filter their own content, hence no need for "editorial content" (featured or "premium" videos). Says Joost: search is an outmoded and suppressive method of finding content; navigation and discovery must be made part of the experience and part of the fun, so editorial content adds value. Both sides (and the other panelists) agreed that social filtering is crucial. Joost got extra points for including "microboredom" as a driver of online video consumption. Microboredom! It's not in the dictionary; it's not even in Wikipedia!

In all, it was a terrific conference, both panel- and networking-wise; if it happens again next year, we should shut down the department for a day and all go together — heck, let's bring CSB with us. Maybe they'll have the stamina to stick around for the Web Video Celebrity Game Show grand finale (I, sadly, did not).

What Wolf Won

noreply@blogger.com (Marie Drennan) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 23:28:00 +0000

The Josh Wolf case has raised important questions about who qualifies as a journalist and whether journalists should be shielded from participating in government investigations. But as urgent as these questions are, it is unfortunate that they have so completely overshadowed some of the finer points of this case — specifically, the terms of the subpoena that Wolf refused to comply with, and of the deal he ultimately made with the U.S. Attorney.

The subpoena demanded Wolf's unedited video and his testimony before a federal grand jury. The video has taken center stage as the "real point" of the case, but as Wolf has pointed out repeatedly, the really urgent issue was the testimony. Grand jury proceedings are secret; no records are ever published, so no one can ever prove whether they restricted their testimony to necessary or known facts. And the grand jury can ask anything. Who was that person standing next to you at the protest? Do they belong to any other activist organizations? Who else belongs to that organization? The person testifying does not have a lawyer present, cannot refuse to answer any questions, and can never prove that he or she didn't name names.

This is what Wolf found "more egregious" than turning over the tapes, and I agree with him. He also couldn't say very much about it, on the advice of his lawyers. So the tapes naturally became the focus of the story, because that's all that could be talked about. Fair enough.

Until his release. Since then he has said plenty, but somehow it isn't making its way into the news. The story still seems to be: Wolf Gives Up Tapes, Gets Out of Jail. This is true, but is far from being the whole story — in fact, it actually conceals the real story, or at least gives the impression that the "fine print" is insignificant. It's not. It's really not.

Of course, it isn't the fault of any reporter or news writer when city officials come out with lamentably silly and uninformed-sounding non-statements such as Tom Ammiano's ("Josh did what the Giants couldn’t do today, he hit a home run") and Ross Mirkarimi's ("You went in as a blogger. You’re out as a hunk with a new cause we can rally around"). These vapid sound bites do nothing except help brand the politician as being on the "right side" of a fight. So the newspapers that report what was said can't entirely be blamed for reducing a complex issue to a simple zero-sum game.

But some news writers deserve a bit more blame than others. No matter what facts and quotes the writer is stuck with, it's still his or her job to present information with as much relevant context as possible, and to avoid reinforcing skewed and misleading interpretations.

To illustrate my point, I'd like to quote from an article published last week in the San Francisco State University campus newspaper, The Golden Gate [X]Press.

Immediately following the rah-rah nonsense from the two city supervisors, the article reads:

"Wolf’s freedom came after reaching an agreement with the United States Attorney’s office to submit raw footage he shot of an anti-globalization protest through the Mission district in 2005 as part of an investigation regarding the assault of a police officer and the torching of a police car during the protest. Wolf denied that anything of value is on the tape.

Along with his release from prison, Wolf will not have to testify before a Grand Jury in the investigation."

To me, this presents a simple equation: Wolf gave up the tapes and as a reward was let out of prison and told he didn't have to testify before the grand jury. Primarily, it suggests that Wolf's goal — the point of his entire ordeal — was to protect the tapes, period. Yet what we know (or what more of us would know if this part of the story got some attention) is that giving up the tapes would have qualified as proof that incarceration was likely to succeed in coercing him to testify for the grand jury. Giving up the tapes would have amounted, legally, to his saying "Keep me here long enough and you will get my full cooperation." Protecting the tapes wasn't about protecting the tapes — it was about resisting the more egregious demand for his testimony. This is why Wolf had already repeatedly offered to let a judge view the tapes: they had nothing on them, there was nothing he needed to protect, but giving them up per the terms of the subpoena would have gone a long way toward forcing him into the other part as well.

Does it matter that one person managed to resist that order? I think it does. I think it matters so much that it should be plastered in a huge font across every newspaper in the land, along with all of the tedious, complicated, fine-print details — so that the next person in Wolf's situation, whether they're a blogger or a journalist or not, can be prepared.

Photo source: jameswagner.com

Exerpt from Josh Wolf's statement on February 6, 2007, upon becoming the longest-incarcerated journalist in U.S. history:

The second reason compelling me to refuse to cooperate with the Grand Jury subpoena is that this whole thing is not about what the government would have you believe it to be. This case is not about a videotape, it’s not about identifying suspects of a crime and it’s not about obtaining justice. If it were, then the U.S. Attorney would not have argued against the judge reviewing my outtakes in his chambers and the U.S. Attorney would have been more receptive to the inquires my defense team made.

No, this case is not about a videotape and it’s not about justice. This entire matter is about eroding the rights of privacy and those of a free press. It is about identifying civil dissidents and using members of the news media to actively assist in what is essentially an anarchist witchhunt. This is what I have suspected from the beginning, but it has been brought closer into focus with the government’s recent response to our motion. I will not allow myself to be put in a position of outing anarchists who likely are guilty of nothing more that possessing political beliefs outside the American norm.

How many of the freedoms promised to us in the Bill of Rights are still intact? How many more liberties will be eroded away? The future is uncertain, but at present the military continues to wage war in Iraq in the name of freedom. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the tragic irony of it all.

The role of the media is to ask the questions, to point at those inconsistencies, and to demand answers from the powers that be. This is why the media is under attack and this is why it is so urgent that we continue to fight back. Because without a free press we can never be free.

And I’ll conclude with the word of Mario Savio that defined the Free Speech Movement some 40 years ago and still possesses a tremendous vitality today. On December 2, 1964, in the city of Berkeley, Savio stated, “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even tacitly take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”

Thank you, and I look forward to returning back to San Francisco just as soon as the government comes to its senses and realizes that I will not- that I cannot be coerced.

Thanks again,

Josh Wolf

George Orwell, Campaign Strategist?

noreply@blogger.com (Marie Drennan) — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 21:06:00 +0000

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
— George Orwell

The "Vote Different" video is raising lots of questions about campaign ethics (did Obama's people commission the video; is this a new low in smear campaigning) and the growing role of new media in politics. But I'm not seeing much discussion of "Vote Different" as a mashup, or of mashup/remix culture, per se. That surprises me because it seems like a perfect illustration of what mashup/remix is for and what it can accomplish.

"Vote Different" is a good mashup, and not only in the sense of being skillfully produced. It's also good in the sense that it does what a mashup should: combine and juxtapose elements of existing works (and the meanings encoded therein) in such a way that the new, derivative work contributes something new to our understanding of that subject or item or concept. The point of using existing material isn't just to be lazy and avoid producing one's own work from scratch. Remix culture seeks specifically to activate the audience's systems of association and cultural knowlege — the messages we've already received and internalized and incorporated into our own "maps" of the world — and to then take that whole cognitive package and tweak it (recontextualize the familiar) to elicit new meaning.

I think the "Vote Different" video is a truly excellent example of how that works. The original Apple ad used imagery from an existing work, George Orwell's novel 1984, to evoke a sense of liberation from an oppressive world of bleak conformity and lack of choice. It did this very effectively, but not for the purpose of illuminating anything or anyone: it was just an ad produced to create a brand, not stimulate or express thought. The "Vote Different" piece takes all of the meaning crammed into the Apple ad and redirects it: now we aren't looking at consumers bored with the range of computers available to them, set free at last to buy stuff from a cooler company. Now we're looking at the public, the culture, ourselves, dully gaping as the latest Big Brother figure drones on at us — it almost doesn't matter who it is, the point is we get that it's the face of the state, of entrenched power, of a system too big and old for us to know how to change.

In this sense, I think "Vote Different" actually helps recover the meaning of the original work. Orwell created Big Brother as a way to talk about government and power and hegemony and coercion — not what color of plastic you want your computer to be. Apple trivialized that meaning in its ad (and faced similar criticism for its Think Different campaign, which capitalized on images of people like Cesar Chavez, Albert Einstein, and Mahatma Gandhi. "Vote Different" restores Orwell's original meaning and refocuses attention on something relevant to the original work. That isn't something required of all mashups or remixes, but it's an extra little bonus that I appreciate in this one.

As for whether "Vote Different" is an ethical kind of campaign material, I have to admit I don't see it as significantly different from most campaigns. Aren't they all using the same emotionalistic, button-pushing, id-activating, critical-thought-squashing, propagandistic message-pushing strategy? Why is it any different for George W. Bush to stand on the White House lawn or on the bridge of a naval carrier spouting slogans and catch-phrases and sound bites — isn't that just as manipulative? If someone out there sees a connection between Hillary Clinton's speech and Orwell's world of permagov and doublespeak, why shouldn't he manifest that idea as a video and put it out there for discussion? Honestly, I think that Philip de Vellis (who called his work a "citizen ad") has contributed something incredibly valuable to this campaign cycle: something intelligently conceived, clear in its message and intention, that calls for discussion of things we really ought to be discussing, not just now but all the time.

And while I personally felt some dismay at seeing Hillary get that treatment — I like the principle behind the video, not necessarily the content of the message — I wouldn't want to squelch remix culture or keep it out of the political realm because then we might never have been given "Imagine This" (video at right). It's another great example of a mashup/remix making full use of the encoded meanings in the original work, and recontextualizing the familiar so that new meaning emerges. In this case, the derivative work further illuminates a subject/theme/concept which it shares with the original — not always or necessarily the case, but done rather nicely here, expanding and refocusing rather than just repeating the original message.

And while we're talking about Orwell, here's a video of a guy getting arrested for asking Texas governor George W. Bush a question at a campaign appearance. Not removed from the event — arrested. The cameraperson gets roughed up, too. A disturbing look at very early signs of how our free speech and freedom of the press were going to go. As a remix or mashup, though, I have to rate this one very low in concept and quality: it's hard to tell whether the music and CG text are supposed to be ironic, scary, or silly. And the guy, Alex Jones, doesn't seem aware of how his behavior might be undermining his message; I'd think a smart conspiracy theorist would try to avoid triggering all those stereotypes of the paranoid loudmouth with no social skills. Too bad — I love conspiracy theories and hate to see them wasted like this!

"Vote Different" by Phil de Vellis, who says his message was that "the old political machine no longer holds all the power."

Here's the original Apple "1984" ad.

Here's the original Hillary Clinton video announcing her intention to run for president in 2008.

Mashup of George W. Bush singing "Imagine"

Alex Jones getting arrested for asking George W. Bush a question at a campaign appearance.

All Hail Wikia

noreply@blogger.com (Marie Drennan) — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:42:00 +0000

Do you worry about the death of the book, the death of the book store, or even the end of reading in our hi-tech, wi-fi world?

Do you count the number of laptops vs. the number of books open on tables when you go to a café?

Do you read blogs and weep when you see total lack of capitalization or punctuation, writing that appears to have no structure or telos beyond simple blurting of impressions and feelings, or token bits of text humbly serving to introduce whatever piece of embedded video is taking center stage?

Me, too.

But let's not panic too soon. There are still a lot of people out there who care about writing, and a lot of people who want to read — yes, read, really read! So where can those writers put their work, and where can readers go to find it? If you poke around Google and delicio.us and Technorati and whatnot, searching for "hyperfiction" or "on-line publishing" or "e-book," you'll find some good stuff; same with blogs and personal websites. Of course, there will be a lot of trial and error necessary, a lot of sifting through sites and pieces of no interest to you before you find what you really want.

This has been the case with pretty much every type of Internet content: it takes a while before someone centralizes, organizes, indexes it enough to make it really useful. Remember life before Google? (Nooooooo!)

Someday there will be an organized, indexed on-line resource for creative writing of all kinds. A library, if you will, that everyone can contribute to — and that is subject to some form of quality control regarding literacy, clarity, accuracy (when that is an issue), etc.

Enter Wikia, latest brainchild of Jimmy Wales, creator of Wikipedia. (Cue angels singing. Ah, Wikipedia, how I do love you!) Among other things, Wikia is emerging as a central repository for several interesting forms of on-line creative writing. Like Wikipedia, it is editable and records the history and discussion of edits; hopefully this will keep standards high as has been the case with Wikipedia.

Wikia's creative-writing/fiction component is called Novelas, The Free Library. It has sections for novels, novelas, short stories, interactive fiction, scripts, poetry and fan-fic, plus discussion forums, lists of guilds (collaborative projects) and other resources. It's an amazing, tantalizing, inspiring site that has huge potential for helping writers and readers find each other.

Another interesting Wikia category is Alternate History. Listed by POD (point of departure), each entry describes a fictional event that changes the course of history. Some cool PODs on the list: 850 A.D. – Instead of discovering gunpowder, the Chinese discover explosives, leading the world into an early space age. 1209 – The Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of Languedoc is a failure, eventually making vegetarianism in Europe stronger (POD for Vegetarian World). 1846 – Zachary Taylor killed in beginning of Mexican-American War, as are other military figures, such as Ulysses S. Grant during the course of the botched war, leading to an American defeat. 1997 — American Vice-President Al Gore is killed when Air Force Two, his official plane, crashes in California. This is the POD that kicks off the President Gary [Condit] timeline, which is fascinating to read and to imagine.

And finally, perhaps my favorite Wikia item (though it's so hard to choose!) is the Uncyclopedia, which describes itself as "an encyclopedia full of misinformation and utter lies." Kind of a cross between Wikipedia and The Onion, it features satirical "news" items as well as biographical, historical, and other "information." It revels in its freedom from the constraints of fair and accurate reporting, and tends to indulge in pokes and jabs at "the so-called experts at Wikipedia," while sustaining the best characteristics of its progenitor — intelligent design and techie Darwinism in perfect harmony.

Or maybe I should just admit I love it because of the mascot (see right).

"Sauron, our lord and mistress."

A Hoax by Any Other Name

noreply@blogger.com (Marie Drennan) — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 21:51:00 +0000

Bad media writing alert!

On February 1, Boston police arrested Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky for having put up several LED display devices around Boston. The men were charged with placing a "hoax" device intended to cause panic.

Media coverage of the resulting "bomb-scare" in Boston and of the case against the two suspects—specifically, the different treatments of the word "hoax" in headlines and articles—reveals how frighteningly easy it is for news writers to mislead readers and influence opinion out of sheer carelessness with language.

Let's start with a look at the word "hoax". Merriam-Webster defines it as "to trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous". The Free Dictionary says "1. An act intended to deceive or trick. 2. Something that has been established or accepted by fraudulent means". Given the context—harmless devices mistaken for bombs—the word "hoax" implies that the people who created the devices and placed them where pedestrians and motorists would see them intended to scare people.

It's pretty clear that wasn't anyone's intention. The devices were part of a marketing campaign by Interference, Inc. to advertise Turner Broadcasting's Cartoon Network program Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

We'll probably never know whether anyone involved ever raised a hand and said, "Hey, what are people gonna think when they see these unfamiliar devices with wires hanging off them, mounted in strange places like freeway underpasses and bridges?" Turner bought its way out of having to answer such questions for $2 million (to compensate the city of Boston for the expense of deploying emergency crews, and to ease the sting of the traffic tie-ups caused by the scare).

But even if someone did say something like that at some point, and even if that person got silenced or brushed off, what's the likelihood that anyone intended the devices to look like bombs?

It's interesting to see how different media sources handled the word "hoax". Some referred directly to the wording of the charges, for example CNN's headline: "Two plead not guilty to Boston hoax charges". The article reports that Judge Paul K. Leary maintained that the D.A. would have to prove the suspects' intent to cause a panic, which didn't appear to be the case (though he said the issue should be discussed at a later hearing). So this story was in fact about charges of a hoax, not about a hoax. Fair enough.

The Christian Science Monitor put the phrase "bomb hoax" in quotes, which seems to invite appropriate skepticism. However, the article does not question whether the incident was a hoax; in fact, it privileges that interpretation by giving this quote from Gov. Deval Patrick: "It's a hoax – and it's not funny." The article ends with a reminder about the guy who faked an anthrax-powder alert and a lament about fraudulent fundraising e-mails that sap productivity at work, prefaced by this sentence: "Hoaxes and fake terror alerts can cost big money." Forget about inviting readers to question whether there was a hoax; CSM seems to want them to think there was, and to augment their disapproval based unrelated incidents. That strikes me as overtly manipulative as well as inaccurate.

Even more inaccurate is the The Huffington Post headline: "Time Warner Group Apologizes for Boston Bomb Hoax". The wording of that apology specifically reads: "We...certainly did not set out to perpetrate a hoax." Obviously, you can't apologize for something by saying you didn't do it. TWG spokespeople are referring to the incident as a "guerilla marketing campaign" and have never confessed to or apologized for attempting a hoax.

ABC's blog, The Blotter, featured this careless—and cryptic—headline: "Boston Bomb Hoax Blamed on TV Stunt." Huh? "Blamed" implies uncertainty as to who or what did it; some people blame X, some people blame Y. "TV Stunt" suggests something that happened on TV. Every word of that headline is muddy, except maybe "Boston" and "on". The strangest treatment, though, was the globeandmail.com headline, which put bomb in quotes, but not hoax. The headline reads: Man arrested for marketing "bomb" hoax. That one makes my "head" spin. (It also suggests that the man was arrested for marketing a bomb hoax.)

I noticed that on Jan. 31, the day before the two men were arrested and charged, NPR featured this headline: "Misconstrued Publicity Stunt Shuts Down Boston". Now that's an accurate and descriptive headline. Too bad so many news reporters were bamboozled by the sloppy wording of the charge—and too bad so much slanted and inaccurate writing happened as a result.

Here's the little dude who scared the pants off Boston. He's a Mooninite, and he's flipping you off.

Here's a video showing how the devices were made and installed.

(Globe Staff Photo / George Rizer)
Sean Stevens and Peter Berdovsky, who claim that their work is "guerilla art". That's another semantic issue altogether... At their press conference, Sean and Peter refused to answer any questions that were not about hair.

(AP Photo/Turner Broadcasting, Edward M. Pio Roda)
The fall guy: Jim Samples, Cartoon Network executive vice president and general manager, sent this e-mail message to his colleagues: "I deeply regret the negative publicity and expense caused to our company as a result of this campaign. As General Manager of Cartoon Network, I feel compelled to step down, effective immediately, in recognition of the gravity of the situation that occurred under my watch." He'd been at Turner Broadcasting for 13 years. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino commented, "Someone had to pay."

To Be or Not To Be Free to Be Ad-Free

noreply@blogger.com (Marie Drennan) — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:54:00 +0000

Is that title confusing enough?

It's meant to be — it suits the topic. Or maybe "disturbing" is a better word than "confusing" here, as it relates to the mini-monsoon of outrage surrounding adfreeblog.org.

The "org" is actually a website where you can get a button to place on your blog, affirming it as a space free of corporate advertising.

I like the idea, simply because it's getting hard to find non-corporate-claimed space online. It feels good to take a break from the sales-pitches whizzing by my head every second of the day. I appreciated the creators' effort to bring awareness to the issue and let people get involved.

But not everyone saw it as a good thing; in fact, it made some people pretty mad. The discussion thread on AdRants got fairly hostile in places. Wagons were circled. In the distance, a counter-strike was launched: adfreeblog.COM.

The issue of monetizing blogs and vlogs has generated a lot of tension in the ethernetwebosphere (tried to get "new media" and "2.0" in there, too, but pooped out). One person's over-commercialization of public space is another person's honest effort to make a living. When ads started appearing on superpopular Rocketboom and The Show with Ze Frank, there was a not-unexpected rain of criticism (supposedly independent new media "selling out" to corporate power), to which the sensible response was: "Well, why shouldn't we get paid for the work we're doing?"

It's a fair question, and one that continues to generate much discussion — as it should. I'm a little worried about the way the debate is taking shape, though: there's a kind of red state/blue state thing happening, the kind of polarization that just gets everyone caught up in defensiveness and entrenched positions rather than thinking critically and creatively, and engaging in a discourse.

Media writers (like all writers, past and present) should think about what "space" their work occupies, and how their work affects and is affected by that space. And they should keep thinking about it, rather than branding themselves and ending the discussion.

I'd like to offer a historical example that might take the edge off the current debate. Well known feminist Gloria Steinem wrote articles for Playboy Magazine; she felt that by placing her work in that space, she could get that audience to think about things they might not otherwise encounter or take seriously. On the other hand, many argued that she was merely helping a misogynist pornographic publication strike a pose of intelligence and respectability, "de-shaming" it so that it could be sold at a higher profit to a more educated and affluent audience.

Interestingly (and ironically, some said, or even hypocritically), Steinem went on to co-found Ms. magazine, which went ad-free in 1989. Every issue includes a "No Comment" segment, in which readers send in blatantly sexist (or racist or homophobic) advertisements clipped from other magazines.

So Steinem gets criticized for selling out her political values (publishing in Playboy) and for being puritanically anti-capitalist (for refusing to publish ads). It's as if she's not allowed to think through the issues in context and make rational decisions; people expect her to make one simplistic, ideological proclamation and then stick with it forever. I'd call that the true death of a writer.

If I put an ad-free button on my blog, maybe all I'm saying is that this particular body of my work belongs in a space where writer and reader can be alone together, without corporate chaperones, and without making money off one another. I'm not issuing a blanket condemnation of people who put their work in other kinds of spaces; I'm not accusing anyone of selling out; I'm not saying writers shouldn't make money off of their work.

By the same token, if I do want to place ads or otherwise generate revenue for my work, I should not have to adopt a "ruthless capitalist survivor" mentality and cultivate contempt for the ad-free-ists. I shouldn't let myself be bullied into always making that decision the same way, either.

I don't want to leave the impression that the whole debate around adfreeblog.org/com has been hostile. Much of the AdRants conversation was insightful and thought-provoking; the "other side" of the issue is also discussed on the Stay Free! daily blog. In some ways, it's good that the debate has crystallized and given people something concrete to apply their ideas and theories to (always a good test). Maybe I shouldn't worry so much; writers are pretty tough — it'll take more than a button to bring us down.

By using this icon on my website I am stating...

1. That I am opposed to the use of corporate advertising on blogs.
2. That I feel the use of corporate advertising on blogs devalues the medium.
3. That I do not accept money in return for advertising space on my blog.

signed,
the author

By using this icon on my website I am stating...

1. That I am NOT opposed to the use of corporate advertising on blogs.
2. That I feel the use of corporate advertising on blogs IMPROVES the medium.
3. That I ACCEPT money in return for advertising space on my blog.

Signed,
the Author

The cover of the first issue of Ms. Magazine, 1972. Wonder Woman had been aesthetically revamped and "modernized" to boost sales; this is the Amazon Princess in her original form (read more at Amazon Archives).

Character as Story: Meet Betty Butterfield

noreply@blogger.com (Marie Drennan) — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 02:09:00 +0000

What about story as character, character as story?

If you've ever been in a screenwriting or creative writing class, you're familiar with the "character study." These exercises aren't meant to stand on their own, or even be read by anyone else; they're just a way for the writer to explore/develop/get to know the character.

Occasionally a film gets made that is actually a character study. The idea is that "the character is the story." But a character isn't "story" until placed in a context that allows meaning to arise. Then you have a character-driven story (fueled by character's dramatic need) — not merely a two-hour look at a character being who he/she is.

So a character needs some kind of context in order to "be a story" — that is, to generate meaning, to illuminate more than just a fictional personality for its own sake. But that context doesn't necessarily have to be a traditional narrative structure.

This is one of the strengths of new media: work can be crafted for specific purposes outside traditional genres, structures and formulas. For instance, the essay is a powerful form rarely used on TV outside of journalism/news editorials and film reviews, but proliferating online. Many videoblogs are basically personal video essays.

But the video essay is not limited to journalism or even "realism." Expanding the essay form into dimensions of fiction and hyperreality can allow even greater meaning to arise. Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report is a great example of how the fictional element (character) can combine with the "real" element of news media to generate a more potent commentary than fact alone.

This is an area where character can actually "become story": juxtaposing the character with some aspect of reality (great or small) creates tension and meaning. The premise may be extremely simple: Character X records her own opinions and reactions to events in the real world. It is up to the writer to execute this in a way that sheds light upon those events, and perhaps even on our culture as a whole. By way of example, I'd like to offer three video essays featuring Betty Butterfield, a character who, over the course of 74 episodes, becomes a story: the story of our culture, the story of how we all make each other who we are.

You can learn more about Betty's creator here and here. All 74 episodes of Betty belong to the public domain and are available on Internet Archive (just search for her name in the Moving Images category).

* * *

Like so much media found on the Internet, Betty was discovered by happy accident. I was browsing Internet Archive for public domain video related to Wal-Mart, and I saw her thumbnail; I thought it was a picture of a Transylvanian (as in "Rocky Horror", not the region).

Click on images to play

Dig friend Betty's astute observations about late-night TV. Supremely one with her/our/their culture, she speaks for all of us; way down deep in our ineluctable reptile brains, we are everyBetty.

Ever heard the screenwriting adage "Show, don't tell"? Well, if you ever doubted it, take a look — here's why. This hyperreal dialogue between Betty and her sister Bonita (and the camera) is infinitely more powerful than the standard-model public service announcement; it skips the tired information, the preaching, and the spokesperson's lame attempts at sincerity, and gets right into ghastly.

What's wrong with Wal-Mart? You can find out by watching this footage of a day-long protest, or you can listen to Betty for two minutes. Note the use of an unsympathetic and unreliable narrator; Betty is an appalling individual, yet we learn so much from her... she is the Humbert Humbert of vlog culture.

The Death and Resurrection of Formula

noreply@blogger.com (Marie Drennan) — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 22:03:00 +0000

I've been teaching media writing since 2001 — not all that long, but much has changed with the rise of new media. Not just in terms of production and distribution tools, though those have evolved and proliferated with amazing speed. Content is changing. Which means writing is changing.

I sometimes have difficulty getting my students to believe that they are writers. They see themselves as audio engineeers, camera operators, directors, editors, producers. But more and more, these separate jobs are getting done by one person. More and more, the media we watch is coming from a single author, or a very small team operating as an author.

And a lot of these authors don't want to write sitcoms, or crime dramas, or anything else they've seen over and over again on TV. Or they do, but they want to write it better. No one has to copy a formula to get their work "on the air" now. Perhaps the most important feature of new media is that it's different from TV.

This is a beautiful thing. It could save us from the suffocating affliction of monoculture, as long as we refuse to let it devolve into a small-screen version of old-fashioned, corporate-owned, commercial-sponsored television. I understand the urge to keep new media pure in that sense.

But I'm worried, too. "Kill Your Television" worries me. The "death of the sitcom" worries me. I'm worried for all those media-makers out there who suddenly have to be writers, because it seems like a lot of writerly knowhow is about to become taboo.

Yes, I know TV mostly sucks, but we should figure out exactly why before we issue a blanket condemnation of all things broadcast. I feel strange saying it, but I think there's a lot about TV that is worth saving. I feel even stranger saying that one of the things I hope survives is — and now I'm really taking my life in my hands — formula.

"Formula" shouldn't be a dirty word. Of course, most TV shows are crap — but not because they follow a formula. It's because they do so in uninspired, repetetive and predictable ways, and because they sacrifice art (which is original and risky) for commercial viability (which relies on imitation).

But it's silly to say that a bad sitcom is bad because it's structured as a comedy, or that a drama is bad because it's structured as a drama. Formula doesn't make a story boring; rather, it heightens the impact of the material by keeping it clear, uncluttered, and powerful. It helps the storyteller focus and strengthen the plot, create engaging characters, and send the audience on an enjoyable trip.

Formula doesn't have to limit or repress creativity; it can help a writer tell where, whether and why the story is working (or not working). If a story is going to engage us, it needs to be shaped, edited, structured — some writing has to happen. Decisions must be made about what gets told, in what order and at what pace; what gets omitted, or rearranged, so that there can be focus and clarity and meaning; what effects are achieved, what gratifications delivered, what experience is created for the audience.

When a writer knows how to tell what works and what doesn't and why, then any element of a formula can be rejected or modified. Some proficient storytellers (vloggers, for example) do this instinctively and so might think that they're not doing it at all, but we've all seen enough clunky, pointless and boring vlogs (and cable-access TV shows, and student films, and "experimental videos") to be able to instantly register the difference.

Do a search on YouTube for "cat fight" and you'll see where we might end up if we choose to forget what we know about storytelling. (And I'm not even talking about the porn.) I've chosen three cat-fight videos (at right) as examples of storytelling technique (or lack thereof), hoping to inspire my students and other new-media makers to take up the work of being writers.

I've done this because I dread the day when all there is to watch is people's cute cat footage, or unedited road-trip videos, or private musings in extreme close-up. Because, honestly, your cat is not as cute to me as it is to you; your friends are not as funny as you thought they were when they did that crazy thing you caught with your cell-phone camera; the raw footage you shot of the broken-down semi in a ditch somewhere along I-90 is not a pithy commentary on the economics of food transport or life in the heartland. It's just home movies — which can be a lot of fun to watch, but most people still prefer to go to the cinema or the video store or, yes, the dreaded TV, to see something that's had thought and craft put into it. The fact that someone was somewhere with a digital camera doesn't necessarily mean the result is anything anyone wants to watch.

So my hope for my students is this: that they think of themselves as writers. That they take the time to learn about story structure, and then hack the hell out of those formulas with precision, deliberation and skill. That they make media that brings light and life to the great world of people out there, watching.

Click on images to play

6,090 views; 5 comments; 11 favorites. This one didn't "go viral" (spread by word of mouth) and didn't generate much response. It's easy to see why: viewers have to wait through lots of nothing-happening time, and what little action there is doesn't build. Real life is like that: lots of waiting, events not effectively arranged in sequences with pacing and timing and rising action. But a good story needs some shape, needs an arc — or else no tension, no drama, no interest!

25,530 views; 2 comments; 10 favorites. This one didn't generate much discussion either, but it had almost 20,000 more viewers. It uses music to establish some context, and focuses on one event that has a bit of build; not quite telling a story, but getting there.

249,836 views; 116 comments; 986 favorites. Now we're talking viral! And the reason is obvious: at only 9 seconds, this video tells a complete story with identifiable characters and strong 3-act structure. Act I: Naive, overconfident protagonist faces a challenge; is ignored by bigger, wiser, more powerful opponent. Act II: Naive protagonist doubles his efforts, taunts the opponent; at first it seems his second attempt has failed as well (dark night of the soul). Act III: Climax! Powerful opponent engages, beats crap out of naive hero. OK, so it's not a happy ending. But storywise, all the elements are there. And the audience definitely responded.