August 03, 2004
alQaeda.com
: Captured jihadist geek reveals al Qaeda's web strategy (hey, doesn't everybody have a web strategy?): U.S. sources said Khan told interrogators al Qaeda uses Web sites and e-mail addresses in Turkey, Nigeria and tribal areas of Pakistan to pass messages among themselves.
Couriers were often used to deliver computer discs, and Khan would then post the messages on Web sites, but only briefly, the sources said.
According to the sources, after messages were sent and read, the files were deleted.
E-mail addresses were used only two or three times; if the information was really sensitive, an address might be used only once.
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High-rise hair
: Omarosa, the fired Apprentice, dishes on The Donald's hair: "He considers it his good-luck charm," reveals the contestant on the reality show which comes to an end on Monday.
"That's why he won't change it.
"As long as people are pondering his hair then they're still thinking about him and he's still on their minds. So he knows it's a valuable thing." Thank goodness he doesn't think of fingernails as lucky.
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Fixing journalism
: I'm in Toronto at the AEJMC (it stands for something having to do with journalism and education) confab; subset: public journalism.
Len Witt, who brought us together, said that the public journalism movement, 16 years old, was in danger of fading due to the entrenched nature of big media, but it has been revived in the last 18 months.
Why? A growing acceptance, he said, that "the practice of journalism is broken."
I wonder if one surveyed journalists whether they would agree -- and then whether they would agree that their public is part of the fix.
: Dan Gillmor is giving a primer on the technology that is changing everything.
: Canadian journalist Warren Kinsella takes the stage and calls blogging "punk-rock journalism."
: Onto Jay Rosen, who immediately rebuts Kinsella's advice to corporations to speak with simplicity, repetition, and volume. Jay pushes for complexity, length, and nuance. "This, of course limits the success of my weblog. I want to limit the success of my weblog." He knows and likes his public. He says his ethic of drawing people to the site competes with big medias: His is, "I don't care whether you like it.... The very last thing I would assume about my audience is that they need something drilled into their head.... It's the opposite: They need space to expand their own thinking."
He explains his blogging of the convention and how he approached it: He said the "convention was a mystery that needed explanation."
: Up on the panel now. Jan Schaffer of J-Lab, spoke about participatory journalism and said she does not like blogs because they are "not useful... narcisistic... and niche."
I said that as Rosen rebutted Kinsella, I would rebut Schaffer. I said that many don't like big media because it too often useless and too often narcissistic and not often niche enough.
Jan is raring to rebut the rebut. She said I was plagerizing use of "conversation" in all this from public journalism. [I had that wrong before and said the word was "citizens."]
: I should not be surprised, I suppose, that is is -- in pockets, at least -- a resistant bunch -- just as big-media folks have been resistant, but maybe a year behind them. That could be because they don't feel the economic pinch the big-media folks feel. Or it could be because this group in particular is holding onto definitions of "public journalism" that they came up with years ago. To them, blogging is an upstart of a different sort. Big-media folks think -- mistakenly -- of blogs as upstart competition to content while some of these folks seem to think of blogging as upstart competition to their movement. Both are wrong. Blogging and citizens' media are ways to improve journalism and citizens' movements.
: Now Mary Lou Fulton is telling the group about the great work she is doing in Bakersfield -- yes, Bakersfield -- gathering the content of the people and then freeze-drying it onto a paper that is distributed to 22k homes, with 6k more in racks in town.
I'm jealous as hell because I wanted to get this done first. But it's even better learning from Mary Lou.
She says that her goal is to "say yes to everything." A story about a girl selling lemonade to make money for her librarian who has MS is news. And publishing that news respects the people. Amen!
The best thing she hears is that "I saw part of me in this."
She says that some of the news that should be coming into papers doesn't because people tire of going through the gatekeepers. "That's the problem with buildling gates: You're keeping people out rather than letting people in."
She's giving good tips. Something fascinating: Businesses wanted to be involved and Mary Lou et al decided it really wasn't fair to exclude that one group. So they sat down and said that a business could write one article a year about its expertise (not its business): Smart. Gets them involved. And they make sure they are transparent about the relationship.
: Joey deVilla is summarizing one of a half-dozen breakout sessions (what's a conference without breakout sessions?). He says of bloggers and media: "If there weren't a void in the first place we wouldn't be rushing in to fill it."
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Xenophobic Sprint
: Well, damn Sprint. I can't use the data features up in Canada.
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How big is Google's news net?
: Vin Crosbie looked at GoogleNews' usage of sources and found that though they monitor 7,000 sites, only a few are used often (in the display, I assume, as opposed to the news search). That's not wildly surprising. But what is surprising is the use of a few oddball sources: It's why you keep seeing AP stories via China. Vin's calculations of top sites used include: Reuters 175 stories 18% of all
New York Times 80 stories 8% of all
Voice of America 67 stories 7% of all
Xinhua 67 stories 7% of all
Bloomberg 61 stories 6% of all
Washington Post 61 stories 6% of all
ABC News 49 stories 5% of all
Boston Globe 26 stories 2% of all
CNN 22 stories 2% of all
San Francisco Chronicle 17 stories 1% of all
CNN International 17 stories 1% of all
Christian Science Monitor 15 stories 1% of all
Toronto Star 13 stories 1% of all
Seattle Post Intelligencer 13 stories 1% of all
United Press International 12 stories 1% of all By the way, when my son had to find UPI stories for some (very outdated) assignment at school, I sent searching and the only paper in which I could find them anymore was the Washington Times.
What Vin's numbers also don't reveal is the use of some really crackpot sources (while ignoring much larger weblogs and other sources).
This is a good subject for more study.
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Whereabouts
: This is the public journalism and education conference where I'll be later today.
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Enough gotchas
: I'm at the airport this morning -- a fresh, sparkling coating of terror orange paint still drying -- and I read in The Times and in the comments here and in various blogs the hot belch of "gotchas" because some of the information captured that led to yesterday's alerts was three years old. The implication, of course, is that the Cheney-Bush industrial complex dredged this up only to scare us and get a point in the polls: the August surprise.
Only I heard this news yesterday, too. And so what if some of what the terrorists gathered on that thankfully incompetent geek-jihadist's laptop was three years old? Does that mean they shouldn't tell us that these specific buildings have been and may still be under surveillance and then under attack?
Can't have it both ways, folks: Can't scream they they don't tell us what they know -- and then when they tell us what they know, it's not good enough for you. It's what they know. Can't scream that they're not connecting the dots and when they connect some, you scream because you don't like the picture it draws.
I'm no fan of Bush or Cheney. I think Tom Ridge is an incompetent dolt. I think John Ashcroft is a dangerous fanatic. But you don't hear me heh-heh-hehing this morning. You hear me thanking the lady at the security checkpoint for X-raying my loafers.
Enough with the gotchas. Enough with the demonizing. Enough with thinking that the bad guys are our guys. Enough with the naive, simplistic blame game.
I hated it when the right did all this to Bill Clinton: Bill and Hillary are evil, they said, and if we just get them out of the White House, heaven will be ours. And so I hate it when the left does this to George Bush: Dick and George are evil, they say, and if we just get them out of the White House, heaven will be ours.
Grow up.
Life isn't that simple. I hated Richard Nixon and wanted him out of office and think he was, indeed, a crook and pond scum. But I don't think that everything he did in office was maliciously motivated and evil. I hated Lyndon Johnson because he ran a war I hated and because I was young; I wanted him out of office and added my young, cracking voice to the mobs demanding that; yet I see now that LBJ also did great good. I don't much like George Bush or Dick Cheney but I don't think that they wake up every morning asking how they can ass-f* the world today. It's not that simple, folks.
And the problem is, if you think it is that simple, then you don't pay attention to what matters. If you think all our problems will be over when we get Bush (or Clinton or Nixon or LBJ or Carter or someday Hillary or Obama) out of office, then you're going to wake up the next day and realize that we still have all our problems. And we have them because you were so busy demonizing the guy on the top that you didn't go after the real demons.
: John Podhoretz is of the right. Quiz the two of us about our political beliefs and we'll end up miles apart. If Michael Moore had lunch with John, he'd end up shouting at him the way he shouted on Bill Maher's show the other night. He'd see a boogeyman across the table. I had lunch with John some months ago (it's time again) and we talked about terrorism and the war and trying to find solutions because we realize we're in this together.
Go read John's column yesterday, in which he says that the gotchas and the boogeymen won't get us anywhere. During America's "vacation from terrorism," he says: American political junkies and politically engaged people in the West fell back into the comforting old habit of imagining that the only things that matter are the things American politicians do.
Everyone on the Left — from soft liberals to Michael Moore — seemed to have decided that the problems faced by the United States were primarily or even solely the fault of George W. Bush.
The Right fell to squabbling and niggling about the way in which the War on Terror was being fought.
During their vacation, both Left and Right fell prey to a kind of arrogant American innocence. It was as though both ideological camps essentially came to believe it was within the capacity of the United States to envision every conceivable difficulty we can face.
So the only reason we didn't stop 9/11, or went to war over WMD we haven't found, or faced terrible difficulties in pacifying Iraq and Afghanistan, is that we suffered from a "failure of vision."
Or because our leaders lied.
Even though these sorts of ideas have provoked nothing but rage and fury among the faithful who have chosen to believe in them, they are perversely comforting.
If we're so powerful, then we aren't facing much of a threat.
If we're the enemy — or, rather, if George W. Bush is the enemy — all we need do is turn the guy out of office and we'll be safe. Meanwhile, fanatical fundamental murdering nutjobs spend years and years plotting their ways to kill thousands of us. The plot to bring down the World Trade Center took a helluva lot more than three years. They worked more than a decade to meet their goal. But here we are nya-nyaing and gotchaing while they plot.
And then the terrorists strike.
And then they're the ones who say "gotcha."
: LATER: See Ken Layne, too.
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August 02, 2004
Alert
: We're all alert these days. I walk to the PATH train in Jersey City and see a Port Authority employee leading a cop quickly to the edge of a plaza. Reporter -- and idiot -- that I am, I follow. The PA guy says, "It seems to have a homemade antenna." He shrugs, not wanting to sound paranoid, only alert. He points to a parking lot behind the station, a real run-down stinky place. Turns out he's pointing to a big, red suitcase that's abandoned. The cop tiptoes up to it. I decide I'd be an idiot to stick around. As our President says, once burned is...
I come back hours later and there are the remnants of a police line up at spot. The big, red suitcase is now ripped open and in a dumpster just there.
I wish I'd thanked that PA employee. False alarms are better than no alarms. This is life in -- as the New York Post called Jersey City -- Terror Town.
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Cell crimes
: So I was listening to Al Franken's Air America show the other day and he got a call from a guy in New Jersey who, in the middle of the call, is obviously pulled over by a cop for talking on his cell phone while driving, which is now illegal in my fair state. The guy starts protesting. Al gets all excited with this historic moment: Man arrested for calling talk show! But the guy hangs up. Al's disappointed (would have made great radio: police state, free speech, technology, all that).
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A democracy is born
: The news from Afghanistan: 90 percent of eligible voters have registered to vote in this October's elections, the country's first elections in history for its president.
Compare this with America, where (according to the latest figures I could find), less than two-thirds of eligible voters are registered and just over half of eligible voters actually vote.
Now I don't want to hear any snobs, snots, jackasses, and self-important Western fools tell me that Afghanistan or Iraq or Iran or any nation and any people are either "not ready for democracy" or "do not want democracy." Crap. Give the people an opportunity to speak and the people will speak.
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Next, they'll put their sister on eBay
: Jason Calacanis is shocked and disappointed to find that the content on Fark is for sale.
: UPDATE: As Ken Layne points out in the comments here, Drew Curtis responds in the comments on Calacanis' site; says it's a sales rep who doesn't speak for Fark policy.
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O, Canada
: It's merely coincidental that there's a terror alert on today and I'm going to be in Toronto tomorrow.
I'm going for a jouranalism educators' conference (don't laugh, Layne & Welch) and I'll be on a couple of panels about, well, you can guess what.
I'm looking forward to finally meeting Hoder and Kathy Shaidle and others. Will blog from over the border.
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The weltanschauung of a machine
: Earlier today, I check the untouched-by-human-hands Google News and found the top story was, of course, new terror warnings around New York and Washington.
And then I went to the brand new untouched-by-human-hands Newsbot at Microsoft and found its top story was Steven Jobs' cancer surgery.
Apple v Big Apple. The soul of the machines.
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It's real
: The threat is very real, as is the fear, as is the impact on lives.
My wife and I sat down last night and reconfirmed our disaster plans. If something happens, she's going to get the kids in the car and head north. We even had the map out to go over the route to Toronto. The last time this happen, they said to leave the kids in school and she did. Not this time. Pack 'em up, head 'em out. I'll catch up when and if I can. Don't wait -- not for me, not for the details that reveal whether it was chemical or biological or "just" a bomb; we didn't know what the hell was going on the last time and we won't the next time. So hit the road.
Do I think this terrible lightening will hit us again? Well, of course, I pray it doesn't. I hope that we're making progress with intelligence and arrests. And, no, I do not think this latest announcement was a campaign move -- an August Surprise. I'm not that cynical.
But I never would have imagined that what happened here almost three years ago ever could have happened. Call it a failure of imagination or call it civility, but that was then. This is now. I've witnessed their bestiality. We know what they can do, our enemy.
And so we plan because we don't want to regret not planning.
Michael Moore would make fun of that. He's a terrorism denier. He'd say, as he and a looney congressman, Rep. Jim McDermott, did in his movie, that we're just falling into a vortex of political spin. I hope I never get the chance to rub their noses in the words if another attack occurs. But if and when it does...
It's real. The threat is real. The fear is real. The impact is real.
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We, the Media
: Dan Gillmor's damned good new book about all this, We, the Media, is is in bookstores and at Amazon . Go pick it up.
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August 01, 2004
.blogs? .not!
: I agree with Rex Hammock, who respectfully disagrees with Steve Rubel about creating a .blogs domain. Blogs aren't just blogs. They are anything their creators want them to be. They are content. They are interaction. They are media properties. They are advertising. They are tools. Let's not ghettoize ourselves. Good discussion, but I side with Rex here.
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Fear of heights
: Curbed finds a Fotolog by an ironworker. Amazing shots. Sweaty palms.
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Feeling very orange today
: Another terror warning -- but this one is more specific than usual, thus scarier. ABC News and The NY Times report that authorities have intelligence of attacks against specific (unnamed) companies in New York. Says ABC: Sources at several law enforcement agencies tell ABC News that an "overseas source" has provided the information about the threat to New York and that it is more significant than the usual "chatter" intercepted from likely terrorists that has prompted warnings in the past....
"Intelligence reporting indicates that al Qaeda continues to target for attack commercial and financial institutions, as well as international organizations, inside the United States," the New York City Police Department said in a statement released today on the "ongoing al Qaeda threat."...
Intelligence sources say al Qaeda plans to move non-Arab terrorists across the border with Mexico.
Authorities already have in custody a woman of Pakistani-origin arrested after crossing into Texas. She carried a South African passport with several of the pages torn out, $7,000 in cash and an airplane ticket to New York....
Particularly disturbing to authorities were the intelligence reports that the attack may involve one or more suicide truck bombings, a tactic never seen in the United States, but one widely used by terrorists elsewhere. Well, the difference between a suicide truck bombing and the first bombing at the WTC and the bombing in Oklahoma City is that the asswipes didn't die. The Times adds:Another law enforcement official in New York said many companies and institutions had already been contacted, and that they were warned to pay particular attention to their parking garages and heating, ventilation air conditioning systems.
"We've notified security directors to secure HVAC systems, and parking garages in particular, because of concerns about a vehicle bomb," he said.
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The last thing we needed
: Leave it to my least favorite TV critics, The NY Times' Alessandra Stanley, to come up with the single dumbest commentary I've seen about the conventions: What was missing last week, however, was the unassailable authority that a network anchor brings to convention coverage. I'd say it's plenty assailable.
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Nerd news
: VC David Hornik gets into the Democratic Convention and visits blogger boulevard and observes: While some of the bloggers looked as much like journalists as the professionals on the floor, others looked more like sys admins. And, frankly, this new breed of journalists were just that -- sys admins in reporters clothing (or is that reporters in sys admins clothing). If only Dan Rather wore shorts in winter and socks with sandals....
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I'd pay to see Michael Moore in a burnous
: When Michael Moore and Saudis fight, it's hard to know whom to root for. Is it wrong to just stand back and let them beat each other up?
In the Telegraph, a Saudi diplomat slaps back at Moore: 'Michael Moore made a request to visit Saudi Arabia and we granted him a visa, but he never came,' said Prince Turki in an interview with The Telegraph. 'He missed an important opportunity to find out key facts. In my opinion he should have made every effort to go to a country he has taken to task so heavily in his film.' Oh, wouldn't have that been fun: Moore stalking Saudi princes.
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July 31, 2004
Everywhere art
: Am I the last one to see Sent, an online gallery of art from phone cams? If you want to submit, send pix to submit@sentonline.com. Invited artists include "Weird Al" Yankovic, Mark Cuban, and Will Wheaton.
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Blogging in underwear
: Nerve started a photo blog.
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Just what we need: more yelling
: I'm watching a one-night-later rerun of Bill Maher's show and the decibel level is rising to the shrill heights of tabloid TV and CNN before it got dull. Yeah, this is helpful, this is smart. Michael Moore and Canadian loser Kim Campbell team up with Maher to beat up Republican Rep. David Drier over the seven minutes -- you know, those seven minutes. They scream for more than seven minutes about the seven minutes. Get a platform, people.
More stupidity. Maher pontificates: "Political conventions are important and they deserve to be broadcast and watched in their entirety." That's naive nostalgia and we don't need Bill Maher to tell us what we should watch.
The only moment to enjoy: Ralph Nader appears and both Maher and Moore get on their knees to beg him to drop out.
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Hemlines and weblogs
: The NY Times relegates weblogs to featureville with a Sunday Fashion & Style story about the convention bloggers. Doesn't say much. Or rather, it says too much after a week in which too damned much was said about blogs.
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Take that
: David Weinberger responds to CNET's Charles Cooper in a vlog: "Read my pixels: I am not a journalist." Watch it. He explains blogs to journalists, which is to say that bloggers aren't journalists. He also predicts that bloggers won't be credentialed at the next convention because the people there will be blogging.
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More foto funnies
: The salute, separated at birth.
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Sex sells!
: Steve Hall's wonderful Adrants is supposed to be about advertising. But, like advertising itself, it's really about sex: National Orgasm Week, hot-chick hitchhikers in wet t-shirts, Victoria Secret's college hottie-wear, TV cameraman hires hooker in TV van, Molson's pick-up-chick advice, hot marketing director poses in Playboy to get free ink, Christina Aquilera makes shoes hot. Excuse me while I go take a cold shower.
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Boston: The Vietnam Re-education Camp
: As a (graying, middle-aged) child of the '60s, I'm amazed that Vietnam became a key campaign bragging point in Kerry's acceptance speech.
Vietnam had become such a dirty word to both sides. To the antiwar side, it represented a wrong; to the prowar side, it represented failure; to both, it came to mean shame. And today, in Iraq, Vietnam came to mean quagmire to the antiwar side. The word was as loaded as a bomber headed for Hanoi Harbor.
Yet here was John Kerry -- ten-hut! reporting for duty! -- masterfully playing every side to his favor: He fought in Vietnam, so he can run an army. He fought against Vietnam, so he can keep us out of a quagmire.
Vietnam, the word, had been rehabilitated before our eyes. There was not a moment's hesitation, not a decibel's hush surrounding the word in Boston. Vietnam suddenly became a happy word, something to brag about: Mom, apple pie, and Tet.
I never thought I'd live to see this day. Vietnam, the word, truly divided this nation -- nothing like red-state-blue-state hype we endure from talk-show twits these days. Vietnam brought war to the streets around that Democratic convention. Vietnam divided families (almost mine). Vietnam ousted a President.
Clearly, Kerry is counting on Vietnam ousting another President. He hopes the doves ('60s word) will see him as the guy to avoid fighting another Vietnam. He hopes the hawks will see him as the guy to avoid losing another Vietnam.
And so, he surrounds himself with vets and pictures of war and pictures of protest and he salutes and we are all re-educated like ARVN officers let out of camp in Hanoi. Vietnam is now a happy word, an honorable word, a word that means success by avoiding failure. Vietnam is frigging nostalgia. Vietnam is a word meant to unite, not divide.
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh.
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Media explodes
: Seth Godin has words of great wisdom for media and advertising machers (and it's not even a manifesto): According to MarketingVOX, online media accounts for 12% of media consumption. That's a stunning rise: one out of eight, up from zero in just ten or so years.
At the same time, though, they report that online media accounts for just 2% of ad spending.
This could be because online media doesn't work (but it does)
or that it's hard to buy advertising in it (but it isn't)
or that it's radically underpriced and a bargain (which may be true).
The real reason is pretty obvious: organizations hate to change. (so do people, but that's a different story).
Whenever you are faced with a situation where your competition is afraid to change but you can see the reality of the situation, you have a huge opportunity. This is the biggest growth and market share opportunity in at least a decade.
Short version: corporations, politicians, non-profits and even individuals who overinvest in online will see the same spectacular bounce that companies saw from TV in the fifties and sixties. : Add to this Barrons practically writing print's obit. Add to that Jupiter's contention that online ad spending will exceed magazine ad spending by 2008. Now subtract half of all that because of (a) hype, (b) experience, (c) prudence... and you still have an upheaval in the media and marketing industries. And it has just begun.
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July 30, 2004
If markets are a conversation... and news... so should politics be
: After I blogged that the political conventions should be distributed across the country, Cameron Barrett, former chief blogger for Wesley Clark, emailed me to report that he had proposed just that to the DNC. Sadly, they didn't take him up on the smart plan. Now Cam tells us about it.
He told the DNC that it "needs to start moving away from the 'broadcast politics' of the past 40 years and more towards something called 'participatory politics' " and proposed building a network of thousands of Democrats' blogs for the convention. He told the DNC in May: By opening up the communication between those attending the Convention and the general public, it enhances the idea of inclusion, participatory democracy and openness -- best represented by the Democratic Party.
All politics is ultimately local. Delegates are at the Convention representing their constituencies, their interest groups, their politicians and the American people of the Democratic Party. Providing a categorized online communication architecture that outlines this for the American public so they can participate in the conversations they care about the most with the delegates, their politicians and other concerned Americans is a crucial step. The Bush-Cheney campaign and the RNC is all about command and control, with their army of trained underlings. The Democratic Party (and, ultimately the Kerry campaign) should be about channeling the diversity of their supporters in ways that benefit the Party. The core concept here is bi-directional communication -- communication that goes in both directions, from the top down but also from the bottom up. Alas, they weren't ready for the future.
Cam told the Democrats that a thousand Democrats' blogs beat one Democratic Party blog. Amen.
He also wishes that the bloggers who had attended had involved the citizenry more, soliciting their questions and trolling the hall to get answers.
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The missed story in Bostn
: What I really wanted bloggers to do in Boston was find the stories that weren't being covered. They didn't, frankly, because there weren't stories worth covering. That's why bloggers covered themselves and why the press covered bloggers; it was all that was new. Or so it seemed.
Jay Rosen found the story that was truly missed, a story that is about more than the convention; it's about America; it's about the world; it's about our age and it was right under thousands of noses for news in Boston: Security. It was all about insecurity, really. It was telling us that we live in a different world than the last time there was a poltiical convention. If there needed to be something "new" to report, it was not, by god, the bloggers. It was this: the reason we needed all this security. It not only spoke of politics, but world politics, and not in an abstact way, but in every way a person can experience life. Hey, what was all this security about? And who authored it? Ultimately, Al Queda did. So things had to stop short of ultimately.
That was a story I think we missed. The unbelievably out-in-force Security--double searches, forced to walk through pens made of wire, and much, much more--was like a stream of data telling us a lot about the state of the nation, the state of the world, and, yes, the seriousness of this election-- and of the convention itself, a political event after all....
I think all 30,000 of us missed the story of what the security invasion was telling us about the state of the nation, which is bound up with other nations on the globe we live on, and actors beyond that category, too. But that would lend an out-of-control and unintentional gravity to proceedings that are supposed to be fun and rah-rah.... It wasn't reported, Jay says, because "it would have required us to admit it: Al Queda also came to the convention."
And Al Qaeda will be coming to New York next. But then, the reason this is a story is that Al Qaeda lives next to us every day now.
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Bravo for Apple
: I kvetched earlier about my Apple problems and so I need to be fair and say that an assistant manager named Ron at the Short Hills Apple store rescued me and swapped my hosed iPod for another one. I had to grovel only a little. He went around procedure but he gave the customer a win and, as I told him at the end, "you've made a friend."
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On the one hand...
: Steve Safran at Lost Remote says it's time to end this network timewaster: We have to stop the silly, stupid and pointless practice of having one Democratic analyst and one Republican analyst for every political event and story. It adds absolutely nothing to the viewers' understanding of a story to have people from both sides spinning. Want to help the viewers? Put lots of information in context, with background reports and information on your website. Use neutral observers and thoughtful interpreters of politics. Pretend balance is worse than no balance.
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Our pal, Jeff
: Jeff Greenfield is probably the bloggers' best booster in big media because he earnestly likes the things (it's not just a fad) and he's influential. He says to TVNewser: I think the real-time quality to the opinions, corrections, and other voices is terrific; when someone makes a reference to another voice, says 'read the whole thing' and lets you link to the other voice, it's a breakthrough in political dialogue. Unlike some of my colleagues, I don't fear the lack of editorial control, because there's a self-correcting mechanism at work, and if peopel don't like the tone of the blogs, there's still plenty of traditional media around. My big complaint is that it's forced me to get up earlier to read all this stuff--including yours. Not sure yet what I think of the bloggers' convention coverage. In hindsight, what I think I really want from bloggers is the voice of the voter in the thick of the action -- not new journalists, not new pundits, but just people, citizens. I saw some of that. Jay Rosen also gave me what I expected from him -- abstracting the experience to find its underpinnings and assumptions -- which is amazing since he did it nearly live (for an academic!). I won't try to catalogue the rest yet; as I said, I'm still mulling. But Charles Cooper at CNET didn't need any time to decide what he thought: "most of the credentialed bloggers came off like cyberhayseeds in the big city." But neither did Hugh Hewitt: "The arrival of the bloggers is a big deal. They'll never not be here in the future, and now the question is who gets to blog the debates?" Oh, Hugh, we all can... from our couches.... with beer in hand....
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  The John-John moment
: That's what I called it last night: Kerry's John-John moment. Just a tad too cute. Did you cringe just then? I did.
Did they intend this to be a separated-at-birth scene: the Kennedy legacy handed down from Bostonian to Bostonian in Boston, from JFK to JFK to JFK?
Well, Senator, we know JFK; JFK was a friend of ours; Senator, you're no JFK.
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F'ing DNC
: The man in charge of the balloons last night dropped more than helium on the DNC; he dropped the F bomb on CNN. If this had gone out on broadcast, many of the legislators sitting in that hall would have the stations and networks that aired that one silly little word hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
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Vlogging
: Steve Garfield vlogged the convention. I'm surprised I didn't see more citizen video from Boston.
: Speaking of vlogging, Unmediated finds a very nice video hosting service that lets you add video to your blog. Have at it, future Michael Moores!
. . .
Finnish humor
: A Finnish friend of Die Zeit blogger Jochen Bittner sends him a picture of a t-shirt from up/over there with these words on the back: I AM A BOMB TECHNICIAN. IF YOU SEE ME RUNNING TRY TO KEEP UP.
. . .
Blush off the Apple
: I used to be a diehard Apple fan. But then I had a string of machines that were not red but yellow; they were lemons. I deserted Apple.
I've been tiptoeing back. I got my iPod Mini and yesterday I picked up an Airport Express.
But...
The iPod crashed bad last night -- because of Apple's own iPod updater. Thing was working fine. But after updating it wants to be plugged in. It didn't think it was plugged in and wouldn't do anything else. Resets didn't work. Then a reset apparently hosed the drive. iPod dead. I call Apple; wait forever; told I'm six days past my 90-day phone time; I say it was their goddamned updater that did this to me; he listens; he agrees. iPod dead.
I'd play Taps... if I could.
Fred Wilsons' iPod crashed yesterday. Om Malik's iPod died, too. Dreaded clicking noise, just like mine.
The Airport Express is OK, but setup wasn't the breeze it's supposed to be. Worse, when I tried to follow the instructions to set up profiles, it kept crashing my Vaio (Apple's revenge). And the instructions bear no resemblance to the software.
The problem with Apple for years now has been that it pays more attention to design, aesthetics, UI, and advertising than it does to nitty-gritty technical matters. I was thinking about buying a Mac again. Now I'm doubting it.
: UPDATE: Om says it's more than a coincidence, it's a good news story: The iPod updater is killing iPods.
: UPDATE: See the post above. A good Apple manager listened to my problem and whining and went the extra mile to try to solve it. And that is the kind of customer service conversation that keeps me around.
. . .
Nose against the window
: Convention bloggers Jay Rosen, Matt Welch, and Tim Blair couldn't get into the overflowing-with-Democrats Fleet Center to watch Kerry, so they had to watch on TV. They might as well have been on the couch at my place. Free beer.
: Kaus has the best on-the-scene report about not being able to be on the scene: After about fifteen minutes, during which the crowd swelled to about 500, a deputy fire chief appeared on the stairs and announced, in a thick Boston accent, "There's no more room. It's a fie-yah hazard." ...
Alan Colmes arrived, with his producer. He was locked out too, and had a show to do! The cops recognized him and let him in, leading to booing and grumbling in the crowd about favoritism toward Fox. A locked-out dog puppet--I assume it was Triumph the Comic Insult Dog--yelled "Go do your duty, Colmes, and get the crap kicked out of you by Hannity!"
. . .
July 29, 2004
Competent
: There is no word that damns with faint praise more than "competent."
John Kerry gave a competent speech tonight. It was a primary speech, the sort of message you give when you're running against and not running for. There were scant mentions of George Bush but this was most a speech against Bush rather than for a Kerry vision.
What bothers me about the speech -- besides the John-John moment with the silly salute -- is its American defensiveness. He leads with making America "respected in the world." As far as I am concerned, this should not be a primary goal of an administration; at most, it is a fringe benefit. We should do what we need to do and if the world respects that, fine; if France doesn't, I still don't give a damn.
And as one of the pundits said tonight, Kerry echoes Bush post-Clinton when he says: We have it in our power to change the world again. But only if we're true to our ideals - and that starts by telling the truth to the American people. That is my first pledge to you tonight. As President, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House. It was, oddly, a military speech aimed at not using the military. That is a hard line to dance and he danced it: I can use armed forces better than Bush but I will use them less than Bush.
I enjoyed the ovation against Ashcroft. The crowd enjoyed cheering against Cheney.
I wish I heard more about health insurance, more specifics of the plan. Is this just a shift of tax dollars to create credits for premiums or is this reform and universal protection?
There was nothing to hate in the speech, nothing to love. It was competent.
: Robert George of the NY Post, on CNN as a conservative voice, says we just heard the speech of the winner. Nervous Republican.
. . .
Instacommunity
: Glenn Reynolds opens up his comments for live blogging of Kerry's speech by his audience.
. . .
If you could judge a man by his children...
: Alexandra Kerry, the dark-haired daughter we hear less often, gave a great speech tonight, from telling the story of her father's CPR on a sodden hamster to endorsing her father's poltical vision. She humanized him and his policies. Impressive.
. . .
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