Brave New World
UPDATE: Helpful reader notes that encouraging clicks violates google adsense policy. The following satire has been adjusted accordingly, with policy violations excised. More or less cutting the satire out of it. Meanwhile, google has been advised to discount today’s clicks. Enjoy the following examination of old media vs new media:
I’d like to thank Powerline for naming this venue ”Blog of the Week.” This honor follows on a nomination as a finalist for 2006 Best New Blog, a popularity/creative clicking contest in which this blog took second place about a month after I started blogging. I am highly flattered and pleased to be received like this in a world so diametrically opposed to the one in which I’ve spent most of my career.
When I first started taking money in the Bloviating Arts, I was working on a typewriter. Answering machines were exotic. You had to find someone with access to a printing press who would agree to pay you if you wanted to do this. That was a long time ago. A lot has changed. More or less everything. I think I stumbled on the Internet about the time Al Gore did, but he gets the credit. That was a while ago, and it was only last November that I started blogging. I don’t know what took me so long. This is like a candy store. It’s a playground. I love it. Now, I just need to figure out how to make money doing it.
Oh yeah, bloggers are very important and are reshaping the media and the way people understand the world around them.
The mainstream print media, where I still make the money that pays the mortgage, has its back against the wall, in large part because of the Internet and bloggers. We’re still using technology developed in the 19th century and distribution methods developed in the 20th. The people who consider ink smeared on wood pulp an acceptable means of learning the latest news are dying off in droves. We don’t know how long we can get away with it, and we’re trying to figure out how to make the leap. How to support the kind of staff it takes to cover news around the world, across the nation, in your state, down to your town, when advertisers can set up their own sites and get all viral without us.
In fact, we’re facing a crisis. And I don’t just mean me, us, the mainstream media. Whether you love the mainstream media or hate it … and I’m guessing the latter, regardless of whether you lean right or left … there is no substitute for the media’s information-gathering power. It still produces the mass of the raw ore that is processed on the Internet. While we, the Internet-surfing, discerning and blogging public, may need to use logic-goggles to refocus it, without it, we’re legally blind. This crisis the news industry is facing is a crisis for all of us.
Every day, there are fewer of us producing this raw information. In newspapers in particular, the medium that produces the most in-depth information, we’re being laid off in droves. My newspaper has literally 60 percent fewer news reporters today than it had when I started there 14 years ago. Circulation is down about 20 percent. The money isn’t there. We amaze ourselves with our ability to turn out a quality tabloid newspaper every day. We have to. People still want information: in our case, with a couple of laughs thrown in and a “Hey Madge, you gotta see this” or two. They want even more of it. They just don’t want to pay for it, and they don’t want to mess around with newsprint.
In any case, I’ve devoted a fair amount of attention as have some others in my business to this problem. It seemed to come out of nowhere. The TV challenge had been around for a long time, then, in the last couple of years, we hit this Internet thing.
The Internet has a strange organic life of its own. The blogosphere is like a living, breathing beast. With claws and mood swings. I got sucked into it in a way I never would have expected, as a result of my participation in the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent scandal when I showed up at Logan International Airport with some essentially worthless detritus that formerly belonged to Saddam Hussein. By which I mean to say, I never expected to get in trouble over that, and up to that point, was innocent of the blogosphere. So to get sucked into something I never heard of over something I considered irrelevant …
Life’s funny like that.
Suddenly I found all kinds of people around the world commenting, sometimes quite rudely, about me. This was interesting. I studied this thing, and when people began commenting about some friends of mine, who were being falsely accused of war crimes, I got more deeply involved.
Then, at my newspaper, I moved out of reporting and into editing and commentary. I began writing essays that ran exclusively on the Boston Herald website, something new and different. These essays would never wrap a fish. I pushed that stuff aggressively out there into the blogosphere. I made some friends and some enemies.
I am pushing the reporters I work with to do as I’ve done. To go out looking for their readers, far beyond our traditional coverage area. To seek out readers who have never heard of the Boston Herald. Not to sit around waiting for some homeless man on a streetcorner to hawk our news product to them, or for a suburban mom … the 10-year-olds don’t do this anymore … to throw it on the driveway.
How is this all going to end up? I don’t know. I hope we find a way to finance a healthy newsgathering business. I like the fact that we have regular citizens, many of whom are now my friends, examining and challenging the work of my media colleagues, and forcing a new level of accountability on us. The press of our founding fathers’ day was both widely read and widely despised, much as it has been ever since. It was heavily partisan … much as most of it is today, despite the fig leaf cult of objectivity. Hatred of the press is nothing new. However, they understood, as have wise men since then, that we must have a free, flourishing and annoying press if we don’t want to end up like China, which doesn’t. Like Russia, which dabbled in it but now is squelching it. Like so many places around the world we don’t want to be like. Because, as we learn early on in my business, when both sides hate you, you’re probably doing something right.
Now, there is a new dynamic, a new technology that has created a dramatically different means of expression. A new medium that is annoying the media, and angering people to the left and to the right. I love it. It’s a new frontier, where every man and woman is free, where we can express ourselves as we choose, without base obligations or employers or forced allegiances. Pure of motive, owing nothing to anyone.
Except that don’t encourage the clicks thing.
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Topics: Uncategorized
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:31 am on Monday, January 22, 2007
18 Responses to “Brave New World”
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January 22nd, 2007 at 10:47 am
And you’d like us to do what, again?
LOL!
January 22nd, 2007 at 10:50 am
[...] Like I needed another reason to like Jules Crittenden: My newspaper has literally 60 percent fewer news reporters today than it had when I started there 14 years ago. [...]
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:15 am
OK, I clicked. Now what?
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:27 am
CLICKED!!!!!!!!! hehe, good one, nice to get a laugh first thing in the morning. Thanks.
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:54 pm
No Monday morning blues for you.
Thanks for the laughs too.
Now, where’s my prize for clicking your ads? :)
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Okay, okay, sheesh, ads clicked. Nice piece on journalism and blogging, by the way. Especially since, late last fall, we abandoned the print news media altogether, something I never thought I could give up. I used to be angry at my local paper for their lockstep liberalism (the snooty, upscale, yuppified kind, not the real kind). Now, when they call, begging us to take out a new subscription, I just kind of feel sorry for them.
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Where’s the promised COFFEE ad? Disappointed…
(I’m joking, in case you can’t hear the sarcasm)
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Every ad duly clicked. I’ll even do it again if it will keep you blogging. I wish I had a legitimate use for the helicopter service. And the money, of course.
I still like to read the newspaper. I like spreading it out and making a leisurely perusal of every page (when I can keep the cat off). I even like to look at the ads.
Jules, saying that the business has always been biased doesn’t mean that it can afford to stay that way. When your readership goes from the known demographic of your particular area, to a world that now has access to information from every major area in the world, it is even more important to state the facts as known first, without the editorial comment (or judgment laden language). There is virtue in the old who, what, where, when–and sometimes why. The reporters who insist that objectivity consists, not of stating the bare facts as known, but of their being a “citizen of the world”, end up being insufferable snobs who have no respect for their readership–and it shows. It is one thing to provide the relevant context of the facts you are presenting, it is another to present only those carefully culled facts which eliminate anything that goes against a reporters preconceptions; it is one thing to give someone’s stated reasons for whatever action being reported, and attempting to justify or excuse evil.
And it would be particularly helpful if, in the current war, certain reporters were not so obviously on the side of the enemy.
Sorry. You know about these things better than I. Adding my own ignorance about the news business probably doesn’t help. It does make me feel better though. ;>)
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Gotta love Firefox. Right clicked on every ad, open in new tab, close tab without reading.
Good luck… :)
January 22nd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
I only clicked on part of the ads. Does that mean I can only read part of your posts?
Anyhow, the poor quality of reporting is why I no longer subscribe to a newspaper and instead get my news from the net. I was stuck with a very biased paper. It is not that I have a problem with their editorial positions, but they allowed it to color how they presented the news. If I could find a relatively unbiased paper I would still subscribe to one. At least on the net I can check several sources for a story and see if I think it accurate. So I am probably one of those who are driving the layoffs in the news industry, but I would rather that not be so. Yet I refuse to pay good money to a paper when some of it needs to be checked out to see if it is accurate, and part of the rest is so obviously biased that anyone with an ounce of intelligence can quickly figure out it’s inaccurate. All I ask is that stories be presented in a factual way and let me make up my own mind as to what they mean. And I fully understand that sometimes deadlines make it impossible to check everything out, but that only accounts for a small part of the problem. To use a rather well known example, simple logic, if used, would tell anyone that flushing a Koran down the toilet needs to be checked out further before running with such a story. Simple logic would have told anyone, in a much older story on TV, that the Audi could not have suffered from the unintended acceleration in the way the story was presented, and 60 Minutes couldn’t claim deadlines as an excuse. But then CBS has not been noted for accuracy for many years. I could go on, but that seems pointless.
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:22 pm
“How is this all going to end up? I don’t know”, either.
BUT, as I bloviated to my friend Norm
“Well you see, Norm, it’s like this… A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.
And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers….”
Have the ‘media’ consume “a few beers” (ok, since they do now) then a LOT of beers.
OR continue in the words of Don Henley
“I make my living off the Evening News
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry
Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here
I just have to look good, I don’t have to be clear
Come and whisper in my ear
Give us dirty laundry
Kick ‘em when they’re up
Kick ‘em when they’re down
Kick ‘em when they’re up
Kick ‘em when they’re down
Kick ‘em when they’re up
Kick ‘em when they’re down
Kick ‘em when they’re up
Kick ‘em all around
We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who
comes on at five
She can tell you ’bout the plane crash with a gleam
in her eye
It’s interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry
Can we film the operation?
Is the head dead yet?
You know, the boys in the newsroom got a
running bet
Get the widow on the set!
We need dirty laundry
You don’t really need to find out what’s going on
You don’t really want to know just how far it’s gone
Just leave well enough love
Eat your dirty laundry
Kick ‘em when they’re up
Kick ‘em when they’re down
Kick ‘em when they’re up
Kick ‘em when they’re down
Kick ‘em when they’re up
Kick ‘em when they’re down
Kick ‘em when they’re stiff
Kick ‘em all around
Dirty little secrets
Dirty little lies
We got our dirty little fingers in everybody’s pie
We love to cut you down to size
We love dirty laundry
We can do “The Innuendo”
We can dance and sing
When it’s said and done we haven’t told you a thing
We all know that Crap is King
Give us dirty laundry!
Nice Blog, Crittenden. I want you to “make money doing it”, too.
January 22nd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
The print media is dying off, but not as quickly as we’d like to think. Or if it is dying off, reading blogs doesn’t appear to be it’s replacement. Most people I know either still read the paper or get their news from TV broadcasts.
The state of of your newspaper is particularly sad. As a subscriber I find the quality of local reporting mostly sub standard. Most stories are 24 or more hours behind what events at best. Everything outside of the Boston area is an AP or other wire service story served up at face value. Again, I’ve read them 24 or more hours before.
Spot news has ceased to exist. I don’t think I can stand to look at one more picture of someone holding up a picture of their now deceased loved one.
The problem is that man people don’t notice and take everything in your paper and the Globe at face value.
At least you have a decent sports section.
Gary
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:48 pm
You want Moqtada to click on your ADS?
Moqtada was not born yesterday. He knows what results from unprotected clicking on ADS on blogs of filthy Infidels. This reminds Moqtada of famous joke told to him by unclean female of the Marine persuasion:
Two boys were tossing a ball in a vacant lot when one of them was attacked by a Rottweiler. The other boy, thinking quickly, grabbed a sturdy stick, wedged it under the dog’s collar and twisted mightily breaking the animal’s neck and freeing his buddy.
A reporter from the Boston Herald was cruising by and witnessed the scene. Thinking it would make a great human interest story, he began to interview the boys, focusing on the quick-thinking rescuer. Whipping out his laptop he entered the heading: “Brave Young Red Sox Fan Saves Friend from Jaws of Vicious Animal.”
Looking over the reporter’s shoulder, the lad said, “But I’m not a Red Sox fan.”
“Sorry,” said the reporter, “I guess I just assumed everyone in Boston is a Red Sox fan.” Hitting the delete key, the reporter typed in “Young Kennedy Loyalist Rescues Friend from Horrific Dog Attack.”
“I’m not much for the Kennedys either,” said the boy.
“Well, this is Massachusetts ,” said the reporter, “and most folks here are pretty big on the Kennedys. Well, what person do you admire? What team do you root for?”
“I’m a Texas Ranger Fan,” said the boy, “and I really like George W. Bush a lot.”
Hitting the delete key a second time, the reporter typed, “Arrogant Little Conservative Bastard Kills Beloved Family Pet.”
January 22nd, 2007 at 9:23 pm
And yes, I clicked on the ads Crittenden.
How’s things at the mosque, Moqtada? Damn nice legs for a Shiite….:)
January 22nd, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Sorry, but if bloggers need a revenue steam, it is not from ad’s, at least from me. I detest them, I ignore them and I never ever click on them. I would prefer the “micro payment’ type thing I was reading about several years ago, which evidently went no where. I would even prefer a subscription kind of thing, price point unknown. No argument that you deserve recompense, just how you get it.
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:59 am
What are you trying to infer upon me, Worthless Infidel? Many of the Faithful are wearing of the garter belts and the silky stockings under their burkhas - it is meaningless I tell you! MEANINGLESS! Moqtada is of the manliest, always!
By the Beard of the Prophet, Unclean One! You are all alike! May your stomachs roast in Hell for all Eternity!
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Roast stomachs. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
January 24th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Sorry you had to do away with the click-begging, Jules. Consider my clicks restored.
Moqtada, baby. Have you met Farouk?