talking to nobody

citizen journalism doesn’t exist

The Way Things Used to be.

I understand why there is so much hoopla surrounding blogs and the curent state of journalism. For the whole f human creation the person in charge of the message was always considered the demigod among men. Controlling message is nearly as good as controlling thought itself. The controlling of the message became a vocation, a profession, a craft and now an artform. And just like any other craft or vacation you needed training. Just in the same way you need a certification to drive a forklift so too did you need training to get your words inside the printing press.

Once you gained that status, you had to toil away writing stories about county fairs and local township meetings for years. Finnaly, that toil led to a reward. You would have the option of becoming an editor or if you’re lazy you become a columnist.

Columnists got to do all those things that shoe-leather journalists don’t get to do. They get to openly express motives. They can be partial. They get to have a real opinion. This is both a blessing and a curse. People starting hating you en mass. They also start reading you en mass. Hell, some people can even parley a bookdeal out of being a columnist. It was a pretty good gig.

The internet ruins it for everybody

So the internet comes along and gives anyone the tools to publish all their thoughts and feelings (regardless of how stupid) and make available for most of the world to see. Thus jumping out over the tried and true path to being allowed to have your opinion read by the world. Newspaper men and women are up in arms and every traditional media critic predicts the fall of mankind and the sure destruction of the American intellect. Supporters of the new internet paradigm predicted a utopian society in which even the smallest and meekest have a voice and the power of the press is no longer held in the tyrannical hands of the elites. Both groups are wrong.

Blogs rarely break news. It happens occasionally. The Dan Rather takedown serves as an example of what a few like minded dick heads on the internet can pull together if they set their mind to it. Talking Points Memo does occasionally do some shoe leather journalism. for the most part however, Blogs don’t break news, they reflect upon it. The read a wire service (because no one reads fucking newspapers anymore) and spout off their opinion of it. As a group blogs make lots of noise, but they don’t make any impact unless the faceless gods of mainstream media decide to react to them.

This brings me to the title of the piece. Citizen journalism is , for the most part, a myth. It’s something that bloggers who aren’t really getting paid call themselves to make it seem as though they have more impact than they truly do. They don’t practice journalism, they practice opinion making. In order to practice journalism, they’d have to go out and do interviews, make phone calls, have sources, and generally, you know, do some work. They don’t often do those things. And that is perfectly fine with me. It’s what I do here. I spout off my opinion. I enjoy it, but I am not a journalist here. I’m just a guy who follows media and technology closely as a hobby and gives an opinion about it. That’s all I do. That’s all that most bloggers do.

Enjoy it people, but don’t go bullshitting yourself into thinking you’re supplanting real news. As far as newspaper reporters and real working journalist are concerned, quit bitching and get on board. Bloggers can be fine allies for you. They’ll dutifully fact check things and pour over massive stacks of documents looking for nuggets of information. So use them and don’t bee an asshole because you have a degree. If you’re a columnist however, you’re fucked. Go start trying to get a book deal and force yourself to write something longer than 700 words. Or maybe you should be a blogger. If you as a columnist are such hot shit and deserve the 80 grand a year you’re getting from the local newspaper, think about all the riches you will receive when the whole world can read your horrendous nonsense.

Technorati Tags: Newspapar, Media, blogging, journalism

Epic FAIL

So Sarah Lacy bubbly cute inept “journalist” at business week had the interview “get” of the week at SXSWi in Mark “Faceberg” Zuckerberg and flamed out in such a titanic way as to absolutely set the web on FIRE. I cannot in good faith allow such a fantastic coming together of my favorite things go by without writing an obnoxious post about it. This interview had it all. A reporter so obviously smitten with her subject that she couldn’t do anything to challenge him, an open revolt in the audience and an entire back channel discussion of the interview WHILE THE INTERVIEW WAS GOING ON. It makes for a delicious combination of public humiliation, nerd revenge and new media train spotting.

First let’s start with the journalism-

Reporters are almost always supposed to have an adversarial relationship with their subjects. Certainly this relationship doesn’t have to be mean spirited, but it does have to be less than cozy. This interview was the picture of a journalist trying super hard to be friendly with the subject. Fluff interviews are never interesting, but usually these type of interviews are done behind closed doors where the public can’t call the reporter out on that fact. However this group of sweaty nerds where not having any of it.

I wrote in my newsy Gadgetell post that this is really a continuation of the death of one-way media. TV, radio and print have traditionally been a communication of them to you. You as the consumer had very few ways of actually interacting with the content that was being slopped in front of you. You could either watch it, or not. That paradigm is dying right now before our eyes. Just think about what would happen if Barbara Walters had her interview with the president in a public forum where the attendees could shout out questions? It would be a mess for sure but that’s the world we’re moving to.

The mob mentality that was shown at SxSW was one that wouldn’t have possible without twitter. The crowd was able to light their torches and sharpen their shovels while staring at their cellphones. Without that extra tool the mob wouldn’t have been able to go for blood until after the Q&A, not during it. This is what makes new media both fantastic and frightening.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, interview, journalism, Media, sarah Lacy, Social Networking, SXSW, Twitter, useless, Zuckerberg

alright enough of this bullshit

I come to you today as a thirty year old man who is currently having his dreams broken by the entertainment industry. Having lived my life as someone who loves comic books, video games and anyhting else that was female repellent I was aware of the fact that in my youth the very idea that a movie based upon a comic book/ toy franchise was going to do anything else besides be awful and make me sad was out of the question. Movie studios refused to even consider making a Spiderman film, much less movies based upon characters as niche’ as the Watchmen. Over the last several years this has changed drastically. Every comic book from Hellboy to Daredevil is/has been made into some form of hollywood schlock. As with anything associated with Hollywood, it has been a mixed bag. The first Spiderman film was good, the X-men movies are acceptable but craptacular movies like Elektra have soured me significantly.

The whole world has gone geek chic. It’s all the rage now to admit to playing Dungeons and Dragons, wasting tons of time playing Legend of Zelda and arguing over which issue of Alpha flight wolverine first appeared in. For a time I enjoyed this. Those days are now slipping away.

Oh sure I still look forward to Wednesdays and new comic book releases. I still play video games. I still watch Science Fiction. I just don’t do so with as much fervor as I used to. I’m certain some of this can be blamed on age. I’ve got a daughter in first grade. I can’t really waste money on graphic novels the way I would like. I can’t go see Cloverfield on the opening weekend because finding a babysitter can be a pain in the ass. My heart sill burns will geek-ness but less so.

There is a certain allure to being an outsider. To love something that others just don’t understand and to be ridiculed for it is the social icing on the cake. It’s the black eye you have to take to be apart of something that your peers don’t “get.”

“I’d never want to be belong to any club that would have me as a member” - Groucho Marx

As it becomes cool to know the secret handshakes and passwords of the nerd world, it also becomes less interesting. The cache of the geek is become a commodity. In turn, the value is dropping quicker than the US dollar. This returns me to my original point.

Movie studios and TV networks are scrapping the bottom of the nerd barrel in order to try to squeeze more cash out of their already decaying medium and fanboy love has been their saving grace. TV shows like the Bionic Woman, Terminator: the Sarah Conner chronicles, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes and now the god awful Knight Rider made for TV movie are seeking to grab the demographic that everyone covets. Namely 20-30 white men. movies like Cloverfield (21st century Godzilla), Transformers and the new Iron Man feature are doing the same for film.

They are reminding me that I am not an outsider. I am just another mindless consumer of subpar entertainment. This misses the point of geek culture. Nerds don’t want to be a part of the greater culture and we’d really appreciate it if you’d quit getting in line in front of us at the comic book store.

At some point all of this will be moot. People won’t care if you stand in line at the Apple store to get the new iPhone. They won’t care that you can write AJAX script. They sure as shit won’t care if you can tell them every book that Alan Moore ever wrote. Some day the jocks will be cool and get all the girls. I dream of a world like this. We can only hope and wait for the wedgies of American society to come back.

Shabby, but acceptable

As it turns out a few of my more obvious predictions regarding the turtle necked-one’s keynote were accurate (much to my surprise). There will indeed be an iTunes rental store which includes HD, there will be a sub-notebok (kinda) and the iPhone got a minor upgrade. The big news was the uber-thin Mabook AIr that has all the nerds creaming their jeans in anticipation. SAdly, not me. I’m much much much more excited about the new AppleTv and iTunes rental program than I am about any of the other announcements that Jobs made. Here’s why-

I’m a HD guy. For 6 years I’ve sold, installed and explained HDTV to people who can’t understand them. High Def video is sooooo where it’ at for me. Unfortunately the content providers have consistently let me down when it comes to providing something in HD that I’d actually like to see. Of the 17 odd HD channels that I get from Comcast, there are only 7 that I watch on a regular basis. For me that’s been the biggest problem. Once you have an HD set you tend to become a HD snob. I rarely scan the standard Definition channels when I don’t have anything on my DVR. The only programs that I watch in SD are the daily show/Colbert Report, Countdown and the occasional basketball game. That doesn’t leave me a lot of good stuff to watch as I refuse to watch reality shows (mostly) and there is a writer’s strike going on.

What about Blu-ray and HD-DVD you might ask? I haven’t yet seen fit to buy either one of these players yet. Although I suspect I’ll pick up a Blu-ray player now that the war seems nearly over. I consider myself a 2nd generation early adopter. I usually wait for version 2.0 before I make a purchase. this brings me back to AppleTV.

The first AppleTv model was much like most first generation hardware attempts. That is to say, it was a good idea totally blown by poor execution. No HD support meant that I was totally uninterested in the device. Now, I’m beginning to come around on the idea of getting another little white plastic box with and Apple logo on it.

Technorati Tags: Apple, AppleTV

low expectations

So now that CES has ended, the general tech/gadget blog community is taking stock of what has (hasn’t) happened. Sadly this CES was enormously unimportant to everyone but the mainstream media. The big boys where able to marvel of Sony’s 11″ OLED TV that everyone else had seen months ago. Other than that, there was the “oooo look at how then thin Televisions are” story, Blu-ray FTW stories and not much else.

Interestingly, the biggest story to emerge from the annual nerd orgy of chip boards and silicon that is CES is the behavior of a couple of bloggers over at perennial #2 gadget blog Gizmodo. Basically, the bloggers acted like, well bloggers and took a little device that turns off TVs on mass and annoyed several people who where trying to pitch their electronic crack by turning off their monitors. It was a sophomoric and stupid prank to pull. It made tons of people mad, got one of the bloggers banned from the show and set off a firestorm of commentary.

My view on all this is a little different than most. I think it’s something that without the lack of serious announcements, would be a small blip of the radar. This kind of thing is going to happen when bloggers and media types have nothing else to talk about. They tend to make their own news. Plus, these are bloggers people! What do you expect? You don’t invite bloggers (present company included) to you best white linen affair without expecting them to shove the shrimp cocktail in their pockets.

My favorite reaction have been the over reactions. “All Gizmodo bloggers will be banned from CES for life” “Al Gawker bloggers will be banned for life” and my personal favorite “We’ll be lucky if CES allows bloggers to cover the convention ever again!” yeah, right …I’m sure those responsible will be punished on some level, but I’m equally sure that aside from the handful stories that pop up next year to remind us all of what an atrocious act it was and how nothing will ever be the same again.

Except that it will. CES is certainly not going to ban bloggers on mass anymore than they would if a mainstream magazine or newspaper writer puked into the punchbowl. The moral and message of this year of CES can be summed up quite simply. Don’t be a dick, if you do we’ll all shake our electronic fingers at you. And then, nothing else will happen.

Technorati Tags: CES, CES prank, Gawker, Gizmodo, Nick DEnton, Tech

his Steveness returns or… I’m walking on Air

So in the morning, Steve Jobs will once again emerge from his cryogenic chamber of awesome and deliver unto us all another brilliant scheme for world domination. Either that, or he’ll see his shadow and it will be 6 more months of iPhones without EVDO. The big rumor roundup goes something like this:

1. Apple will enter into movie rental over internet business setting up a head to head conflict with Netflix and their new magic box made by LG.

2. Apple will announce new Macbook and Macbook pro models that are slimmer and faster (meh).

3. Apple will announce a new sub-notebook ( a laptop that forgoes hard drives altogether in favor of flash based memory) that will forever change the way we use computers..again (cue dramatic music).

4. The iPhone developer’s kit will be released, thus allowing third party development for the iPhone.

5. The iPhone will get EVDO data service from AT&T and will sure up the iPhone’s

6. The iTunes store now cures cancer and carries the Beatles catalog.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, Macworld, Steve Jobs, Tech

The evils of social networking

MySpace, Facebook and the rest of the oh-so-hip bullshit networking sites have done little for my already shitting social skills. The most I have gotten out of them has been tracking down high school and college friends that I thankfully lost track of years ago. Now, I’m remembering why I lost touch with most of them in the first place.

The internet is perhaps the most pleasantly passive-agressive form of connection you can imagine. I can just email you and not have to listen to whatever crap you’ve got to say until later. At this point, I prefer SMS to actual phone calls and I’d rather you give me a five to nine sentence synopsis of what you have to say so I can get on with my day. Social networking has become the epitome of non-contact communications. After looking over my MySpace friends list (a sad looking 176 friends) I find that I know of actually care about say 30 of them. My facebook profile is just as shitty. I only have about ten friends and 5 of them are people that I am ACTUAL friends with. So why do I bother with this junk?

Now at this point most mainstream journalists would be writing the “breakdown of social norms” story, or even the “how the internet is making us stupid” story. Personally I find this all to be garbage.

Is the internet making us stupid? I say yes and no; but mostly no. It’s making us more myopic and more interested in subjects that make us feel good about our own opinions. People do the same thing when determining their friends and lovers. We tend to have small circles of friends that grow larger and less meaningful the further away from us the circles get. It is our Roladex, our christmas card list or (in GTD terms) our someday-maybe list.

People almost never develop life-long relationships of more than two. If you think you have more than four other than your spouse, parents and children you should count again. So no, social networking on the internet is not anymore cold and heartless than human’s real relationship structure is. the bottom line is people tend to surround themselves with people who share their interests and concerns. It’s basic anthropology. They continue to do so online.

Technorati Tags: Social Networking

Hulu Hulu

Several months ago, Apple and NBC got into a mini showdown over the pricing of NBC programs on the iTunes store. The final result was the removal of any new programs from NBC/ Universal from said online media retailer. Unfortunately this included such geek-friendly fare as Battlestar Galactica and Heroes. NBC direct was NBC’s immediate answer to the sudden deficit of legal programming. NBC direct was poorly conceived, didn’t work for Mac users and generally made people sad.

Fortunately NBC and Newscorp’s new on-demand video site Hulu.com seems stunningly well done.Corporate video sites are often so terribly implemented that they often feel as though the audience is the last thing that’s on their minds as they develop them. I recently gor my beta invitation to Hulu and have been pleasantly surprised so far.

Hulu unlike many attempts at corporate video sharing sites, actually works. NBC et all have delivered on their promise of a descent 2nd option to jacking all their shit off of Pirate Bay…

Still, there is a hitch in the buttery smoothness of Hulu. That hitch is the writer’s strike. Most people aren’t quite sure why the writer’s strike is going on and Hulu is a great example of why the strike matters. There are ads interspersed into each clip show or movie that you watch on Hulu. The writer’s who help in the creation of said content get absolutely no share of this ad revenue. So while the produces and studio’s get an extra stream of cash from the online video sites, the writer’s get a pat on the back and a hardy helping of the middle finger. So until the writer’s who make this crap that’s on TV watchable are out of work, I’m off of Hulu as well..

Technorati Tags: Hulu, TV, Video, writer’s block, Writer’s strike