Enough with the Julia Allison already!

Despite what I wrote yesterday about my love for the window we now have into the insane world of New york media, I really do wish Radar would just shut up about Julia Allison. Don't you know that ever pixel you print about her only makes her stronger? Also, she is deadly uninteresting.

I love Media Drama

In the not too distant past, when people still actually read things printed on paper as their main source of information, newspapers and magazines were fairly impressive institutions. A few gossip doyennes and editors became visible Personalities, but most journalists toiled away as faceless bylines, which somehow helped to fuel the idea that we should put our trust in these people and their work because they must be more objective, more analytical, more intelligent than the rest of us.

But that has all changed, now that anyone with a blog can be both a "journalist" and a microcelebrity. And thanks to the cult of over-sharing that has developed, we all get a peek into the catty high school that is New York Media. And, holy cow, is it a great show. I wish I could say there was some marvelous abstract philosophical reason I enjoy this, but I think it's just my base love of gossip. And thanks to our current internet media culture, it really is as juicy as the worst drama in your high school, only better. After all, you "know" all the players from reading their sites and then you can watch the drama unfold from all points of view.

Take today's post on RadarOnline, announcing that Jezebel's Moe Tkacik had accepted then rescinded her acceptance of a position there. The post, itself is gracious (maybe too gracious to be sincere?) but the sniggering comments are.. well, typical sniggering comments. And, just like high school, where all your past transgressions and embarrassments are part of a communal history, always ready to be pulled back in the light at a moment's notice, it only takes about 5 commenters before someone references the recent rape debacle from Moe's disastrous embarrassment of an appearance on Thinking and Drinking.

Of course, if Emily Gould is any indication, it's as exhausting and emotionally painful for the participants as all that high school drama was back in the day. Which makes me feel a little guilty.. but not enough to stop reading as long as they keep posting.

The Dangers of Blunt Force

If you are interested in the complex issues of ownership, IP rights and enforcement mechanisms, this detailed saga about the recent DDoS attack at Rev3 is a gripping read.

My hope is that incidents like this will prove to be so obviously ludicrous (and, quite frankly, illegal) that it will act as a watershed moment, like the Sony Rootkit did for music, and force visual media producers to wake up and start addressing their "problem" as an opportunity.

Your Life Online and Your Privacy

Interesting, two different accounts this week of young women who are, by any reasonable measure, micro-celebs online and the unfortunate backlash that can entail

Emily Gould, formerly of Gawker overshares about the negative consequences of oversharing and then hooking up with another oversharer and Ariel Waldman attacks Twitter for allowing ongoing, unspecified harassment.

So, now that we are all celebrities in our own niche, where is the line between regular person online and legitimate public target?

Yes, Sweetie is a Medium Deal

I've been mulling the whole "sweetie" incident over the past few days and I've come to the conclusion it's kind of a big deal. Not a feeding frenzy Big Deal or a campaign-derailing Big Deal, but a good teaching moment. I think Broadsheet nailed it:

Someone could call a professional woman "sweetie" and mean it in an avuncular, affectionate, non-harming way -- the way Barack Obama no doubt meant to deploy it. But just because a word is not meant as an offense, does not mean that it isn't diminishing, paternalistic and disrespectful.

I have no doubt that Obama will do good things for working families and the working poor (who are disproportionately women), and this in no way diminishes that. Policies and ideology are more important, in terms of choosing a candidate, than personal quirks and imperfections. But, just like I correct anyone who says, "That's gay," in my presence, the point should be made that perpetuating even unconscious sexism ought to be avoided.

We Are the Media - Now What?

I've been thinking a bit lately about the unique challenges introduced by the new world of media, particularly now that blogging is pretty much accepted as mainstream. It brings in a whole new rule set.

Take, for example, lone bloggers or even blog consortia where each brand is strongly identified with an editor or a single contributor (e.g., the Gawker Media sites). I read two such, smaller fry sites on a daily basis - Soxaholix and The Comics Curmudgeon. What happens when the person who is the brand goes on vacation or gets sick? Comics Curmudgeon's Josh has Uncle Lumpy to step in for his planned absences, and he will often note the outside forces keeping him from posting promptly or at greater length. But I notice when he isn't there. Uncle Lumpy is great, but he's an entirely different person and most of the site is built on Josh's personality and sense of humor. In Old Media terms, it's almost like GQ trying to slip you an issue of Details because their editor was too sick to pump out an issue. Over at Soxaholix, author Hart Brachen posted about his and his wife's illnesses, which were keeping him from his daily posting.

Compare this to newspapers or magazines - simply anonymous organizations where most any cog can be replaced and the readers are none the wiser. Even television news and entertainment programs can generally swap personalities with little audience disruption. Not only have we come to expect a high level of quality and frequency from sources who operate at little or no profit, often as a side "job" but we further expect an explanation for any lapse, including personal details from someone with whom we actually do not have a personal relationship.

I'd been thinking about this fairly concrete aspect of it even since Hart's recent problems. But a post today at Feministing got me thinking about a whole new level - ethics. Besides expecting a higher level of commitment from our bloggers and online media personalities, we also seem to expect just plain more of them. Jessica's post is entitled Some feminist self-reflection but is much more self-recrimination than anything else. Her crime is not plagiarism, made-up sources, or even not producing enough corroboration in support of facts, her crime is not listening to her detractors and critics, particularly those who post in the comments section of the site. This is simply fascinating to me. (On an interesting tangent, I considered briefly that this was a symptom of being a progressive woman blogger, rather than simply a blogger. After all, progressive ideals lead us to be more collaborative, bottom-up, inclusive and non-hierarchical. Then I realized those are the same ideas of the blogosphere, so there you go.) You would never see such a statement from television or print commentators; after all, it's their job to convince you their opinion is right and you are stupid if you disagree. Even factual errors are relegated to small retraction or correction statements, only the most notorious cases generate such a brutally honest, long-form apology.

I love that the web is shaping not only new forms and delivery media, but actually shaping the quality and content of the information we consume, even if some aspects of the transition make me feel a little sorry for these guys.

Commodify Your Media, It's Good For You!

Many have lamented that the 24-hour news cycle, created first by cable news and consolidated on the web, has caused a noticeable drop in the quality and accuracy of reporting. Outlets rush to be the first to report a story, and even if some of the facts are off, missing or just plain wrong, they can post updates later to clarify or correct. That's why this weekend's On The Media story about a cooperative effort among Ohio newspapers agreeing to share headlines and content was so heartening. Sadly, the whole conversation was a bit short-sighted and played into the "Old Media is shriveling up and dying" meme, but between the lines was some real hope.

The conversation started to head in an interesting direction when interviewer Bob Garfield asked about the "commodification" of local news and therefore, the weakening of the individual newspapers' brands. Though Cleveland Plain Dealer Editor Susan Goldberg only got the chance to answer briefly before moving on to cover other aspects, I think it opened a window into the benefits of this commodification. When a scoop headline becomes a shared resource, the only way to grow your brand is through deeper and more insightful reporting. Further, by creating a cooperative/collaborative group, you free up journalists to do this sort of in-depth reporting and follow-up. Each paper no longer has to send one of its own reporters to every fire, car accident or homicide; that burden is spread around, leaving the other 11 reporters who would have been hanging around, jostling for tips and access, free to pursue other stories, hopefully spending more time on each one.

Obviously, that is the most positive outcome of such an arrangement. In many cases, this type of cooperative arrangement can really only act as a stop-loss, given the slashed staffing at most local newspapers. But even there, it has a great deal of benefit - again, allowing the smaller staff to continue to create a true local newspaper with quality reporting.