En Words

The Great Online Journalism Lie

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 11:13:00 +0000

I enjoy online media: reading, watching, listening, and producing. Working on the web has immense potential. But there is a lot of foolishness playing itself out, often in the form of mindless cheerleading that brings little thought and no historical perspective. Apparently Henry Blodget is in that company.

This is the same guy who was a Wall Street analyst touting dot com businesses and one of the voices crying that the old models of business -- you know, the ones about needing revenue and a way to work toward a profit -- were dead. All you needed was a market willing to invest, also known as the greater fool theory. You invest money and wait for a bigger fool to pay you more for the shares.

And now, as an online journalist covering high tech, he's apparently found his latest cause: claiming that the old media are dead. And, in one sense, I'd agree that newspapers, certainly, are facing some major problems and many are not going to survive. And according to the report of a talk he recently gave at a conference, some of his points were good.

But in one area he makes a critical mistake, assuming that setting down words, and even finding facts, is the same as journalism:

Henry also pointed out that journalism isn't dying, it's just old-line newspapers which aren't adapting. In the new model, with 1 billion potential fact-checkers, if Watergate were to occur today, the underlying documents would have been posted to smokinggun.com. [Emphasis from the original.]

His argument is specious. The vast majority of information on Watergate didn't come from documents someone could find online or even in a physical public file. It came from investigative reporting, speaking with hundreds of sources and using relationships developed over years. Getting the story out took a frighteningly large number of hours by teams of reporters, and all the resources they needed, at a number of major dailies. Having fact checkers is nice, but someone has to go get the facts in the first place. If Watergate were to happen today, not only would the world of potential fact-checkers be useless, but most of the writers, including Blodget himself, wouldn't have a clue as to how they would even begin reporting this type of story.

Just look at what the Washington Post had going for it: a couple of tenacious reporters on staff, the resources to allow the reporters to concentrate on all the related stories for months on end, the money to hire any necessary legal help, and the prestige to help attract potential sources. You won't find that at most online sites, and no large collection of enthusiastic crowds that don't have the time and money to pursue such reporting can help.

The real pity is that by the time most people realize this, it will be too late. So much of online work depends on original news reporting that a good deal will fall away.

Genius and Popularity

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 12:28:00 +0000

The Guardian has an interesting article on whether U.K. art schools have a culture of celebrity -- if institutions and instructors are encouraging the thought among students that they will be launched into success upon graduation. "Yes," says some established artists, and "No," reply the schools.

It's an interesting read, particularly when you consider that the economy is going south and that money going into collections may well drop, and individuals and institutions both feel an unpleasant tightness about the wallet. But I think that the question of celebrity and success is off from the real question: Who gets to wear the mantle of genius?

As a culture, we often assume that there is a meritocracy in all endeavors, and that the ones at the top are, by nature and work, the best. It's an approach that you could likely trace back to the Enlightenment and has appeared in many forms, whether the Social Darwinism of the 19th century or various forms of institutionalized racism that explained the dominant group's ascendancy as a combination of nature and application of self.

But that attitude is actually a form of rationalization. To accept that one is in a privileged position though pure dumb luck is to admit two things simultaneously: that one's advantage is unjust, coming at the expense of others who might be more deserving, and that one's luck could just as easily turn sour. A moneyed person, basking in his or her "superior understanding of life," can easily park a fortune with the likes of Bernard Madoff and become destitute as a result.

Rationalization of position within society extends into the arts, which have their own hierarchies and power structures. Those who matriculate from the various academies then apply for positions and assignments from the guardians of culture: the various people who taught them. The cycle extends itself and true artistic merit becomes that which fits in. I've seen some visual artists and writers argue that true genius always bubbles up, but I think that is wishful thinking.

Genius is often under appreciated. Bach's musical interests were in areas already on the wane in his time, and he was considered a second-tier composer, though a cracking good authority on the construction of pipe organs. It took a hundred years for his music to be resurrected, and it took a Felix Mendelssohn to do so. Herman Melville was written off by the critics during his lifetime to the extent that on his death, there was only a single newspaper obituary. Van Gogh? No one would buy his paintings. And yet each of these geniuses now outshines many contemporaries who were considered the major talents in their lifetimes. And these are a few of the examples of which we know. How many greats died too young, or utterly lacked in the art of self-promotion?

The great lie told in schools and in society is that those who are best will be known. Clearly that isn't the case. We are lucky as a people to have a hint of who might possess greatness in our own times, and the possibility of misjudging is high. The true way to work in the arts is through humility. None of us can ever really know how the future might treat us, or whether success is a matter of luck and having enough in common with those in power. All anyone can do is work hard, trying to understand the nature of what we do and honor it. Everything else is a distraction and a crap shoot. Or, as Ecclesiastes succinctly puts it, all is vanity.

Kirk Douglas, Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:15:00 +0000

I was intrigued when I read this Reuters story about Kirk Douglas blogging at age 92. The entries are relatively short, but certainly thoughtful and about far more than fluff. If you're interested, you can see his MySpace page here.

Man Gets Scratched for Scratching Sentence

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:24:00 +0000

Ah, the foolish temptation to fix a piece of paper for your own benefit. An Arkansas man had received a $650 fine and four-day jail sentence for hazardous driving with a suspended license. The judge told him to turn in to the clerk his notice of the sentence. So the man allegedly had a clever idea: scratch off the jail sentence. Only, someone saw him. Now he's facing yet another charge -- tampering with a public record. Beware when the eraser seems mightier than the pen, or you could end up in the pen.

EnWords News Roundup (11-24-2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:30:00 +0000

A collection of news about words in their various forms.

Free Recipes as Cookbook Sales Mechanism Will Schwalbe, former EIC at Hyperion, has started a food site called Cookstr that gives away recipes from top-name and lesser-known but solid cookbook authors as a way to get people to buy copies. (NYT)

Random House to Digitize Books Random House will make thousands of additional titles available in e-book form.(AP)

Writing the Unwritable in the U.K. Britain has much stricter (or looser, depending on your viewpoint) libel laws than in the US, as well as other impediments to freely publishing information. But journalists have developed all sorts of ways to report on that which could get them in legal hot water. (NYT)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Stops Buying - For Now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has told its editors that it has “temporarily stopped acquiring manuscripts” in trade and reference. They can't say when the ban will end. Although claiming that the move is about "doing things smarter" than "the end of literature," note that not buying now means not having a selection of new titles in 12 to 18 months. Either the house has a massive backlog, or things are worse than management wants to admit. (Publishers Weekly)

Obama and New Book Directions A Guardian blogger suggests that Obama's election will open the book industry to many new types of titles as well as creating a market for some backlist entries. (Guardian)

US Branch of Manga Publisher to Close The U.S. branch of Broccoli International, a Japan-based manga, anime, game, and merchandise publisher, will close. Although probably few readers of this blog are interested in manga and anime, it's something to note. Graphic novels have become mainstream business and the same approach to story telling has been moving into the non-fiction world. This might be a very early indicator of changing tastes of younger generations. (PW)

EU Book Digitization Project The European Union has launched Europeana, a plan to scan and make available online "millions of books, artworks, manuscripts, maps, objects and films from the most important libraries, museums and archives, and provide them free to download from one website." It will also include video and audio of interest. Having paid attention to the suit against Google, the EU is focusing on works in the public domain. The site is currently down because there was such overwhelming interest that the traffic crashed the servers. (Guardian)

Book of Oldest Jokes Has Dead Parrot Ancestor

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:55:00 +0000

I've written about the world's oldest recorded joke, which, truth be told, wasn't very funny. (Guess you had to be there or be an ancient Egyptian or both.) Now a new translation of a fourth century Greek joke book has a story similar in structure to the "Dead Parrot" sketch of Monty Python fame.

Open Mouth, Insert Politician's Foot

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:02:00 +0000

It's almost too easy to find gaffes among the political during the election. But this one is too good. "Joe the Plumber" became a subject of the final presidential debate. Turns out he's not a licensed plumber and his name isn't Joe. Apparently he has become popular among some parts of the Republican party for criticizing Barak Obama's tax policies. Maybe they should have made sure that he could get his own name and background right first before relying on his political rhetoric.

Australians Forced to Use Filtered Web

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 09:40:00 +0000

The Australian government is planning to filter Internet content, and citizens of the country will not be able to opt out. Instead, they'll be given the option of which set of blacklists to use: one that blocks content deemed inappropriate for children and another of illegal material. There's plenty of concern in the country, whether from librarians who worry about what might be added to the blacklist or ISPs who say that the technology is dicey enough that it will significantly slow all Internet traffic. Some tests suggest that the filters will incorrectly block about 10,000 pages from each million, which is another way of saying that one percent of all sites will be unviewable for no reason at all.

Comic Art Museums and Believing Someone Else's Press

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:25:00 +0000

The Guardian reported on a new German museum of comic art. In it, the writer accepted a claim that it was the first museum devoted to comics in the world. That's the problem of beleiving what you read. San Francisco has had one since 1987; there is a cartoon art museum in Florida and two in New York City; and the National Cartoon Museum opened in 1974 under the name the International Museum of Comic Art. I knew offhand about the one in San Francisco, and about 20 seconds of searching the web revealed these others. There may well be others. It was sloppy work to assume that because someone claims something to be original that it is.

Old Latin Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:21:00 +0000

A Berlin radio station has an unusual programming plan for Sept. 26. It will broadcast its morning show entirely in Latin.

Trailers, news and weather will be translated into Latin for the Kiss FM show, listened to by around 4.2 million people daily, to raise awareness of the tragedy of dead languages.

A highlight is supposed to be a rap song written in Latin. Didn't they used to call those Gregorian chants?

Winner of Oddest Book Title in 30 Years Announced

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:01:00 +0000

I mentioned that the time had come to vote for what you thought was the oddest book title through the Bookseller. The ballots are now in and counted and the winner is ... Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers.

Random House Banned from Literary Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:55:00 +0000

The Langum Charitable Trust, which awards annual prizes for historical fiction and legal history or biography, has blacklisted Random House. No book of that publisher will be able to win one of the prizes because the company cancelled production of Sherry Jones's novel The Jewel of Medina because management feared angering Muslims. As the company announced, it had sent out advanced copies and received "cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

In other words, Random House caved out of fear. Would some Muslims act in that way? Oh, I'm sure, just as you've seen supposedly Christian groups attack doctors who performed abortions. Jones's book imagined the life of Muhhamed's youngest wife. It may have been fine literature or utter crap - I don't know and likely never will. She's free to seek publication elsewhere, but I wonder whether there was a string that she'd have to return the $100,000 advance she received, and who else at this point is going to pay that sort of money?

The damage is done. Not only has Random House essentially told radical Muslims, and any other group that might threaten to take some action to supress a book, that it will do their bidding, but has helped create an atmosphere in which such people will think that if it worked on one publisher, it will work on any. That's why I have to applaud the words of the Langum Charitable Trust:

"That form of cowardice will only lead to more and more of this form of self-censorship and is an attack on the integrity of literary publication," Langum continued. "We must stand up to it, in whatever ways are available to us. The form that was available to our small foundation was to put Random House out of the running for our prizes."

It's not that I think that creating a novel based on religious figures and a likely complete imagination of what people and cultures were like is necessarily something I would want to read, but it ought to be possible to be published. Giving in to censorship is always a bad idea.

Apple Censors Comic

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:58:00 +0000

If you've been following the craze for Apple's iPhone, then you probably know that there's a place where you can download applications. One of them is designed to let comic artists provide their content on an iPhone, and it comes with the first episode of a comic called Murderdrome. Yup, as violent as it sounds - and now banned by Apple for its content, even though it apparently allows other types of media that are perhaps less grotesque but not necessarily less graphically violent. Check the Murderdrome link, read the comments, and see the other types of content that are available through the company.

By now, you might have heard that Murderdrome has been banned by Apple. This is due to the part of the sdk that suggests content must NOT offend anyone in ‘apple’s reasonable’ opinion. Here at infurious, we would love to work with Apple to ensure a content rating system can be put in place to allow material that is no more offensive than many of the R rated films available to download on iTunes.

Once it was government bodies that banned content, and the U.S. has constitutional protections against such activity. But legal rights don't extend to dealing with private companies, and increasingly they act as gateways to content. One day Wal-Mart decides what is family-friendly enough to be put on sale, the next day it's Apple.

At least digital distribution allows those creating the content to distribute it themselves, but let's be realistic for a moment. Have you ever written anything of length, even a short story, let alone a novel? Ever seen the hours a well-executed drawing can take to complete? Ever sat down with other musicians and tried to record songs? It all takes time - lots of it. That's why creative people need to find commercial outlets, because otherwise they have to do something else in addition to make a living, and while many of us will toil away in extra hours, it's often just not enough. To shut down the few commercial outlets to expression, which might allow more expression, is to cut off the ability for most people to make their creativity available. That puts the control of culture into the hands of corporations. To see the result, turn on a television or radio, or read a magazine or hyped book. Don't think that things can't get worse, because they can.

Harsh Library Fine Collection

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:50:00 +0000

A woman in Wisconsin ended up in jail because she hadn't paid some overdue fees from the public library. Heidi Dalibor, 20, owed about $30 on two paperbacks. After a number of notices and a notice to appear in court, she continued not to respond. So officers showed up with an arrest warrant and carted her off. She was out $30, and her mother, $172, to spring the young woman.

Jackson Browne Suing John McCain

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:44:00 +0000

I guess it's a tradition for politicians to sling mud, though John McCain's campaign seems to be doing more than its share. But now it's stepped over the line: the copyright line, that is. A recent television ad made use of Browne's song Running on Empty, only the composer, traditionally a supporter of the other side of the political fence, says that it was done without permission. Oops. That would push the McCain camp from doing the possibly distasteful and even maybe unethical to the all-out illegal, as that woudl be a violation of copyright law.

The complaint alleges that McCain, the RNC and the ORP recently released a television commercial "in which McCain mocks the suggestion" of Obama "that the country can conserve gasoline by keeping their automobile tires inflated to the proper pressure," and that during the commercial Browne's song "Running On Empty" plays in the background.

We'd better through in the outright wrong as well, given that low tire pressure can lead to a significant drop in gas mileage.

Browne's complaint goes on to allege that he "is not the first victim of McCain's creation of false endorsements and manifest lack of respect for the intellectual property rights accorded to musicians by the United States Constitution." As examples, the complaint then asserts that McCain and his agents have made unauthorized use of musical works by ABBA, John Mellencamp, and Frankie Valli.

Oh, mamma mia, what is McCain going to say now?

McCain Showing True Stripes?

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:42:00 +0000

Although I've liked John McCain somewhat in the past, I've gravitated away because of the sense that he's yet another politician who will ultimately do or say anything to get elected. Jonathan Alter's article detailing lies that McCain's campaign has been spreading about Obama does nothing to assuage my discontent. I'm no big fan of Obama either, but when a man apparently allows lying to be done in his name, you have to wonder just how we're supposed to define the word "honorable" these days.

Vampire Novelist's Reputation at Stake

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:20:00 +0000

Stephanie Meyer had managed to write the extremely popular Twilight series and developed a legion of fans. Now that is coming back to bite her a little lower than the neck. The last book was apparently so poorly written that Entertainment Weekly gave it a D rating and many fans of the series are now talking about setting fire to it. That makes me wonder two things. First, could there have been some extremely heavy editing or even ghosting (thematically appropriate, at least) on the earlier books? Not that it's impossible for an author to have an off volume, but when it goes that far south, you have to ask.

Secondly, fame is clearly a double-edged sword. Who's going to buy the next book?

Call for UK Bill of Rights Will Get Mired

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 09:07:00 +0000

I love the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, not only for what it provides to citizens here, but how eloquently and cleverly it does so. Say too little, or forget a key area, and people are left to the whims of government. Say too much, and you get unintended consequences.

That's what will happen, I think, with the latest call for a U.K. bill of rights. Certainly trial by jury as one right is important. But "right to administrative justice?" Just what does that mean? And "international human rights as yet not incorporated into UK law?" Who decides what the international human rights are? What happens if more "develop?"

They want specific rights for "vulnerable groups." But the more specific a bill of rights gets for particular groups, the more it loses, as the idea is to provide the important floor of rights for everyone. Why, in such a document, would you want to detail rights offered some but not all? It seems to fly in the face of the concept itself. And a right to "an adequate standard of living?" I do agree with the concept, but how to you legally ensure that? Whose standard and how much? And that's considered separate from a right to health, housing, and education. Does that mean everyone gets to go to a university, and if so, how much money will it take to build enough of them to provide space for all? Ensuring health care, certainly. But ensuring health? How does that happen?

I understand the impetus: No humane person wants to see others suffer. But how will a document that likely cannot be enforced in its full considerations provide any help? Well, other than making people feel good about the "advance" in society. My bet is that the observation of the New Testament that the poor will always be there will sadly continue, no matter what official dictate is in force.

Time to Vote for the Oddest Book Title of the Last 30 Years

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:35:00 +0000

The Bookseller magazine hosts an annual competition, called the Diagram Prize, for the world's oddest book title. (The 2006 winner was The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.) Because the prize was started 30 years ago by Diagram Group founder Bruce Robertson when bored at a Frankfurt Book Fair, everyone involved decided to have a recognition of the long-lasting nature of oddity. Now you can cast your vote. Pick your choice from all past winning titles. I'm wavering between The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its Role in the World Today and People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.

Google: World's Largest Translation Company?

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:04:00 +0000

Looks like Google is entering another business - translation.

According to the Google explanations on the frontpage and their product overview page, we can see this is meant to be a translation service which offers both volunteers and professional translators... and I suppose at least the professionals will want to get paid. In that regards, the service is in the field of sites like Click2Translate.com (a service by the company which Tony works for, incidentally, and which I’m often using for some of my sites).

But what is really interesting reading at the moment is a translator's view on what Google will do and how it will profit. According to Brian McConnell, a problem for machine translation is its need for pairs of directly (and, presumably, well) translated sentences. The systems then build a statistical analysis to let them swap out phrases to pull together a translation.

Unfortunately, the sources of material are usually governmental bureaucratic meanderings, hence the questionable quality of the results. What Google offers is the possibility of a centralized repository to build an incredibly useful database of translations, which might improve the quality of machine translation. If you've wondered about how writing moves from one language into another, this should be interesting.

Obama Has Gas Problem

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:07:00 +0000

I'm been mildly dumbfounded at Barak Obama's insistence that we need to open the strategic oil reserves to lower the cost of gas in the US. First, in case he hadn't noticed, the price of gas has been dropping, because oil prices are the lowest they've been in three months. Why? Because all the people who had been speculating on the price of oil are getting less sure of unrestrained prices and profits as the economy slumps.

Also, how much did he really think that the price would drop? A nickle? Maybe the 18 cents that he said would be a useless nudge when McCain and Clinton were suggesting dropping the federal gas tax until labor day? I think he was right not to go along with an productive scheme to curry voter favor back then. Now that he's caving in, I'm guessing that we're seeing more of the real man, willing, as so many politicians are, to say anything at times to get elected.

Sunday Papers Big for Coupons? Who Would Have Thought It?

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:30:00 +0000

This, from yesterday's New York Times: "Readers of Sunday newspapers are more likely than other Americans to use coupons, according to a survey released recently by Scarborough Research, which measures consumer shopping habits." Given that Sunday papers are probably the biggest source of daily coupons, is it any wonder that the readers of those papers are the biggest users of coupons? This to me is the equivalent of saying that people who drive into gas stations are more likely than others to purchase gasoline. The next biggest source of coupons is direct mail and, amazingly enough, people are probably less likely to use something they never asked for than something they paid for.

How Do You Entertain a Pharoah?

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:33:00 +0000

Q. How do you entertain a pharoah?

A. Sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and tell the pharaoh to go fish.

That joke was recorded in 1600 B.C. (or B.C.E. for those not fond of a Christian-centric approach to global dating) and is the result of some research that the University of Wolverhampton took up in conjunction with a humor site that now has the ten oldest recorded jokes listed. Looking through them, I'm convinced that the reason we don't have more recorded humor from ancient times is a lack of gag doctors.

Being Orwell's Big Brother

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:25:00 +0000

The Orwell Trust, which administers the Orwell Prize for political writing, is celebrating the 70th anniversary of the release of his diaries by posting them as a blog. It will be interested to see how such a smart writer and gifted craftsperson worked on a first draft basis.

IOC Stands for Freedom -- in Moderation

noreply@blogger.com (Erik Sherman) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:17:00 +0000

After all those detailed negotiations to ensure freedom of information access for journalists during the games, the International Olympic Committee now admits that it cut deals with China, which is blocking web sites that it finds offensive:

China had committed to providing media with the same freedom to report on the Games as they enjoyed at previous Olympics, but journalists have this week complained of finding access to sites deemed sensitive to its communist leadership blocked.

Reporters Without Borders says it's increasingly concerned that there will be censorship during the games. How small minded. I'm sure the Chinese are just trying to help reporters be more efficient by keeping them from anything that would be a distraction.