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Why the mainstream media is dying

2009-11-08T14:56:00Z

Every once in a while you get to see a mainstream outlet cover a story right alongside a blog, so you can put them up against each other and see why one was so much better than the other. This week TechCrunch and the New York Times (photo) provided just such a lesson.

The issue was a company called Zynga, which makes online games, like FarmVille, that have become incredibly popular on Facebook among people who are missing parts of their brains. On Oct. 31 TechCrunch broke a big story called "Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem of Hell" about how Zynga was making money by selling scam ads -- the kind that trick kids and other frigtards into signing up for useless subscriptions to stuff they don't want.

Arrington packaged his story with a video of himself taking on Anu Shukla, CEO of one of the scam-ad distributors, at a conference. He also ran an "insider's confession" piece by a former scammer explaining how these guys operate. He followed with a story about how Zynga CEO Mark Pincus had acknowledged the problem and said Zynga would stop running those ads, and another story about how Anu Shukla had been pushed out of her company, and another story about Shukla's replacement admitting that the company had, indeed, been running scammy ads. On Friday Arrington capped it off with a coup: he dug up a video clip from earlier this year in which Pincus, the CEO of Zynga, told a laughing audience of scumbag developers about all the scumbaggy things he had done to generate revenue with his games.

After all this, we woke up Saturday to find a story in the New York Times, also about Zynga (and other Facebook game companies) with the headline, "Virtual Goods Start Bringing Real Paydays." The Times put two reporters on the knob-polisher, and somehow they managed to interview Pincus, and to quote him -- and yet they included not a single word about the scammy ads. Not. A. Fucking. Word. The piece could not have been nicer if it had been written by Zynga's PR people themselves. Gist: Virtual goods, stupid idea, people play, some spend money, VCs love it, isn't this great.

Ahem.

So: they walked into this shit-storm and somehow, by some miracle, managed not to notice the fecal matter flying all around them. It's like covering a football game that took place in the middle of the blizzard and neglecting to mention the weather.

Now, maybe they did all the reporting before Arrington's stuff broke. In which case they should have gone back and updated their info. Or maybe, just maybe, Zynga's PR people teed up a Times story as a kind of rebuttal to what Arrington was reporting. Either way, that's what ended up happening: Zynga used the Times to deflect the bad shit flying at them from Arrington. They need good press because they're hoping to cash out by going public next year. That story in the Times will be worth millions. Many millions.

Meanwhile, Arrington, still digging, blasted again on Saturday night, reporting that sleazy ads had popped up again on Zynga, despite promises that they would be taken down.

Um, New York Times? If you guys are still wondering why people are dropping their subscriptions and getting their news from blogs instead of you -- this is why.

And to all those people who go around wringing their hands and saying what are we going to do when the "real newspapers" all die and we have to get our news from Gawker and HuffPo and TechCrunch? Friends, I think we're going to be just fine.

Part of it is the form of the media itself. If you're a reporter at the Times, you get one story, and a fixed number of inches, and you're smothered by layers of editors. At TechCrunch it's one guy who can get his teeth into something and there's no limit on how many articles he can do.

What really cracks me up is how often I still hear people say that bloggers are mere "aggregators" and the "real journalism" gets done at places like the Times.

Because time after time, blogs are simply beating the shit out of the newspapers. They're the ones who still dare to go for the throat, while their counterparts at big newspapers just keep reaching for the shrimp cocktail.

As for the newspapers: Faced with their own demise, fearful of losing even more advertising, newspapers have made the huge mistake of becoming ever more timid, more cautious, more in bed with the companies they cover.

It's the exact opposite of what they should be doing. The truth is, if newspapers want to survive they should go back to doing what they started out doing -- muckraking, stirring the shit, calling bullshit.

The other truth is, when these papers are dead, they will not be missed.

And the Scarce Swine Flu Vaccine Goes To . . .

2009-11-05T22:16:50Z

Goldman Sachs! According to Reuters:

New York City health officials scrambled to explain themselves on Thursday following outraged media reports about bankers who got scarce H1N1 flu vaccines through their employers.

Members of Congress fired off letters demanding immediate explanations and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reminded state and city health officers of the need to make sure the most vulnerable people get shots first.

“I am concerned that the distribution of the vaccine is resulting in favored treatment for the privileged,” New Jersey Democratic Representative Frank Pallone said.

The shortage of H1N1 vaccines has frayed nerves, and public health departments across the country say they will not be able to meet the bulk of the demand until December or January.

A classic in government incompetence. First, they don’t have anywhere near the amount of vaccine that they promised; they’re a factor of 10 too low. Then they can’t deliver the vaccine until well after the peak of the flu season. And finally, who gets it first? The government’s friends on Wall Street. They get it before the local hospitals.

Two things:

Be glad that the vaccine is mostly unnecessary anyway.

Note that these are the people who want to run the entire health care industry in the country.

Government is fucked, incompetent and entirely too expensive. But we haven’t the spine to get rid of it or even trim it back.

Ball Cap Sticker Removal: A Helpful Lesson for the Youngsters

2009-11-03T23:59:40Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
Still missing the important "how to put a small curve in your bill" steps, but useful information, nonetheless.

No matter which team you’re rooting for in this great World Series, I think we can all agree on the importance of this piece by Craig Robinson at the excellent Flip Flop Fly Ball. ★

Holiday Lighting Win

2009-11-03T16:46:50Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
I'll be wishing that I could get away with this when I'm crawling around on my roof in the rain after Thanksgiving.

Picture by: JackBrimstone Submitted by: JackBrimstone via Fail Uploader ...

JoT 1313: Darth Droid meets iPhonie-wan.

2009-11-02T18:56:51Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
And speaking of Start Wars.

Yeah, the droid is...blah looking.

A short time ago, in a tech world close by... Click here to visit the comic. http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1313.htm

Movie Narrative Charts

2009-11-02T18:54:21Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
I've never heard of Primer, but that's not what interested me. Look at that LotR chart. How freaking long did that take to put together.

Also, as a sidenote, there is only one Star Wars trilogy and it came out when I was a kid. I don't know what the hell those recent movies were.

Optimistic Libertarians

2009-11-02T17:06:51Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
Great line: "Yet we’re supposed to be optimistic that Ron Paul has achieved something momentous from the fact that his book is high on the best seller lists. Well, a lot of people buy the Bible, Atlas Shrugged, copies of the declaration of independence and the constitution. Yet for some reason, the world is not peaceful or free."

From the Devil’s Dictionary: OPTIMISM, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest t...

When Good Onions Go Bad

2009-11-02T14:14:12Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
Just because you're hallucinating that the bacon has a gun, doesn't mean it doesn't have one.

(Grocery Store | Gainesville, FL, USA) (At the natural foods store where I work, we cater to a lot of people with food allergies. I overhear this conversation between two cust...

Louisville Slugger Bat Maker Loses Lawsuit Because Batted Ball Kills Player [Louisville Slugger]

2009-10-30T16:53:01Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
I don't know what to say except WTF.

I imagine it went down like this: One night over drinks, a couple lawyers got together and started one-upping one another with crazy boasts. At the end of the night, one of them said, "Dude, I could sue Louisville Slugger for making baseball bats. And win!" The other lawyer thought this was ludicrous and bet him that he couldn't. Well, t...

Vaccines

2009-10-29T23:46:09Z

An interesting link on Daring Fireball today has me thinking about vaccines.

I’m still living with the effects of the chicken pox I had in third grade.

There was no vaccine then. Every kid just got it. It swept through school, and nobody tried too hard to prevent the spread, because every kid would get it, and it was better to get it when you were young.

It was just a thing. We thought we were modern because it was just chicken pox — not polio or smallpox or one of those scarier diseases that had been conquered.

But now there is a vaccine, and I wish like crazy there had been a vaccine when I was a kid.

I was nearly hospitalized — my Mom tells me I was within an hour or so of having to go the hospital when I could finally sip a few drops of water without vomiting.

I remember vomiting so much that the vomiting itself didn’t even bother me any more. I started crying out of frustration. Just when I started to feel a little better, a little cooler, and hungry and thirsty, I’d try the smallest sip of water, and whatever was left in me to come up would come back up. It just went on and on.

For days? I don’t know. It seemed like weeks of nights. Trying to sleep. Itchy, exhausted, unable. The screaming heat inside that wouldn’t end. Then the stomach convulsions.

I was told I had chicken pox not just on my skin but inside me, too. Could that be true? Was that possible? I still don’t know — but I didn’t question it, because it sure felt like it.

Of course I had chicken pox on my head. So I had pink hair — pink with the Calamine Lotion my Mom applied. The pink was mortifying to a third-grade boy.

A friend of my Mom’s, a woman from down the street, came by one day. (She was cool: she drove a white Corvette. Here’s one.) I can still feel the embarassment of my pink hair. The spots all over my face I could deal with: the pink hair was devastating.

I was finally able to drink water, and then I moved up to jello and then on to chicken noodle soup. I was able to sit at the dinner table and watch the network news. (ABC news broadcast from WPVI in Philadelphia.)

I got better. After about three weeks of the chicken pox, I could return to school, even though still slightly scarred. Prepared to be teased.

I was the smartest kid in the grade. I won every spelling bee. I got 100% test scores. I always had.

And though I was prepared to be teased for the visible remains of my chicken pox, I was not prepared to get in trouble with my teacher for cheating.

Cheating? Me? People cheated off me, not the other way around.

But I was looking at someone else’s paper. Because I couldn’t see the chalkboard anymore and I couldn’t read the questions to copy them down.

I kept getting in trouble, and I kept getting teased, and I was angry and hot-headed a whole bunch of the time. I started getting in trouble for accidents, and for things other kids had done. (Which wasn’t that new, actually: I was in trouble at school, or about to be and dreading it, most of the time as a kid.)

It was a few weeks before news got to my parents and they took me for an eye exam.

Chicken pox had ruined my eyesight.

So I got glasses, and that worked. But my vision, once gotten a head-start down that path, kept getting worse for a few years.

Though it pretty much stabilized while I was in high school, it got bad enough that it’s dangerous for me to walk around my own house with my contact lenses out.

I can tell you that my staircase has 16 steps. (Easy number for a programmer to remember!)

To read with my contacts out, I have to hold the book so close that I have to close one eye.

I can look down at my feet and not see the cat.

My parents were both near-sighted — they both got glasses in the eighth grade. Their eyesight is better than mine. Odds are I would have gotten glasses around the eighth grade too, and had eyesight about like theirs. Not great, but not terrible.

I wish, to this day, that there had been a chicken pox vaccine.

I later got shingles when I was 20. I won’t be surprised to get it again, but I sure hope not. Shingles hurts.

So I was out about three weeks from school. I hated school anyway.

But we were doing a special unit on the history of native Americans, which I thought would be pretty cool.

I missed some arts and crafts things — creating a diorama, carving a miniature dugout canoe out of Ivory soap. I was just as glad to miss that stuff, as I liked reading and writing better.

I also missed out learning about the history of native Americans, though I did pick up some later.

Which brings me back to the subject of vaccines. And, you know, I thought I was going to, but I don’t really need to state the obvious.

Now We're Sure To Win The War!

2009-10-28T04:13:00Z

At the risk of having too much recent discussion about women and their role in today's Navy, I couldn't let this one slip by. Check out newly-released NAVADMIN 304/09, which features rules for permanent cosmetics. I guess I didn't know that a lack of such a policy was a problem, but this article on the Navy website set me straight. Excerpt:

A Sailor who elects such a procedure must pay for it herself, be prepared to take leave if necessary to recover and be available for shore-based medical care for two weeks following the procedure.
The updated cosmetic policy applies to new Sailors, including prior-service veterans, officer candidates and midshipmen and was expanded to reflect the changing norms of society.
"Due to the increasing popularity of permanent makeup, the update may increase the size of the recruitable population," said Lt. Cmdr. Heather Kline of Navy's Personnel, Plans and Policy Division. "It could also help with retention by providing an option for female Sailors to always look professional and feel good about themselves while saving money on cosmetic purchases."

I bet Al Qaeda doesn't have a permanent cosmetics policy, so their retention will go down! Another win for the Home Team.

But now, what happens if society's norms continue to change, and male Sailors want to get some permanent eyeliner so they can feel good about themselves? I guess then it'll be time for another war-winning NAVADMIN!

Boats Dreams

2009-10-28T15:49:10Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
I still have boat dreams once in awhile. Always weird.

Last night I dreamt about being on the boat again; it seems to happen about once a month. In this one, I was XO on the Connecticut (and somewhat confused about why I was back in the Navy), and I had to go yell at a newly-qualifed Topside Watch who had just made a 1MC announcement that twice featured...

Tim O’Reilly on the Whitehouse.gov Switch to Drupal

2009-10-26T18:15:23Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
Wonder if there's some commercial solutions out there that were trying to sell into the White House?

More than just a win for Drupal, it’s a win for open source software in general. ★

On the Fastrack’s honest look at the blogosphere

2009-10-25T12:24:03Z

From today’s On the Fastrack:

Google Reader Sorts Feed Items by Personalized "Magic" [Feeds]

2009-10-24T00:13:52Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
This will (positive attitude) be awesome when it's incorporated into FeedDemon an NetNewsWire.

Want Google's computers to tell you which RSS feeds should be looking at in Reader, and which feed items to read first? It's now possible, as Reader introduces a "Sort by Magi...

Lukas Mathis on Whether iPhone Settings Should Go in the Settings App

2009-10-23T17:57:15Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
I hate when apps have settings in the Settings App. It slows down Settings itself, and it's cumbersone and not discoverable. Bad HIG choice on Apple's part. Of course, I didn't just post $1.67b in profit, so maybe I'm the one who has no clue what I'm talking about.

Lukas Mathis: If you can at all avoid them, don’t offer preferences. If you absolutely need to offer preferences, put them into your app. It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s worth noting that in iPhone OS, they’re called settings, whereas in Mac OS, they’ve always been preference...

B&N Ebook Reader Lets You Loan A Book Just Once [Ebooks]

2009-10-23T04:38:13Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
I thought book loaning was one of the coolest things about the nook. This is disappointing.

One of the big selling points about the Nook, the new ebook reader introduced this week by Barnes & Noble, is that unlike Amazon they'll let you virtually "loan" your ebook to...

Honor Your Favorite Deceased Infomercial Celebrity This Halloween [Billy Mays]

2009-10-23T01:33:33Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
So wrong. But funny.

One of the inexpensive Halloween costume ideas suggested by readers was to dress in honor of the deceased and beloved infomercial pitchman Billy Mays. (This costume is especia...

Barnes and Noble Announce $259 ‘Nook’ E-Book Reader

2009-10-20T20:30:45Z

Shared by Jack Brewster
Wow. Makes me wish I hadn't gotten the Kindle 2 for my wife. Plus it's Android-based, so it'll be interesting to see what happens when someone roots it.

Good name and much nicer looking hardware than the Kindle, with a color touchscreen underneath the e-paper display instead of the Kindle’s clunky looking keyboard. Their tech specs comparison is explicitly aimed against the Kindle. Supports...

Bag Check

2009-10-19T04:00:00Z