Stuffola

May 31, 2006

A Painful Death at Peaceful Acres

Just finished reading a Raymond Chandler novel, then stumbled across a news story about a fatal fire that reads as hard boiled as any of Chandler's prose.

"Jameson's body was found, one arm outstretched, just inside the door of his trailer in Peaceful Acres Mobile Home Park.

"On the ground near his body was a litter of empty crushed and blackened beer cans.

" 'He fell asleep on the sofa and woke up a little too late," Whitten said."

For the record, Bill Jameson's final word appears to have been goddamn. Which seems remarkably restrained under the circumstances. So much for Peaceful Acres.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:45 PM | Comments (0)

Stupid Soccer Tricks

These are trying times for some Swedish feminists. The national soccer team has passed on the idea of publicly protesting the extra prostitutes (or sex slaves as the case may be) imported into Germany for the World Cup competition; women bosses in private and publicly traded companies has dropped from 32 percent in 2004 to 25 percent today (sorry, it's in Swedish); and the World Cup team from Paraguay is angling for babes.

That last item isn't such a big deal. But it is amusing that one soccer player's lame attempt to score with a Swedish photographer was the top headline of a Swedish paper this morning (thanks for the English translation, DN). It seems that a player from Paraguay was smitten with a female photographer for Dagens Nyheter (the Daily News). She is part of a reporting team that briefly interviewed some team members and then covered a game between Denmark and Paraguay.

According to today's paper, FIFA, the international soccer organization that runs the World Cup, employs "team liaison officers" to help national teams with various tasks, including translating media interviews. After the Denmark-Paraguay match, Paraguay's liaison officer, Manuel Hoffmann, reportedly called the DN photographer at 1 am to say a soccer player wanted to meet her immediately "to get to know her a little better" (translation is mine).

This strikingly original line failed to work any magic for the player involved (although DN managed to squeeze out a fair number of column inches about it). The photographer went back to sleep but wondered the next day (along with her fellow reporter and at least one editor) why the hell an official FIFA employee would help a soccer player chase women. The liaison officer refused to comment on the record but supposedly told one reporter that it was hard to say no to a player when a whole gang of guys were standing around. (Maybe it seemed easier to dial than face a beating with a cleated shoe.)

In the Swedish article DN helpfully points out that players are supposed to behave "for the good of the game" and that FIFA's Article 7 bans gender discrimination (although it's unclear to me how this qualifies as gender discrimination).

It also mentions that two Chilean players got shipped home after a training match against Ireland because women visited their rooms after the match. Guess the Paraguayan player is damn lucky the photographer turned him down instead of going to his room with a camera and a tape recorder.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 08:52 AM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2006

Magazine Death Pool

"Book your reservations on the River Styx now! Place your bets on what The Grim Reaper believes will be one of the richer passengers to cross over a few years from now. I have to admit that I am having one of my boatsmiths constructing a special gold-plated monogrammed vessel for the future Conde Nast business title." The principal over at the Magazine Death Pool has many things to say about the upcoming "Vanity Fair of business," none of them favorable.

"The Reaper knows there'll be a BIG party when it launches. And the Reaper knows that the cover will be plastered in the NY Post and other places. They will be diving headfirst into a shaky category that is experiencing its bumps -- even Forbes has quietly put itself up for an investor's stake.

"The Reaper knows that there'll be a big ad campaign to launch it and there'll be millions spent to promote the first two issues. The Reaper knows there'll be plenty of advertising in the first two or three issues from marketers who just want to ride the initial buzz wagon.

..."The Reaper knows that after the bloom is off the rose, people are going to wonder if another flashy business magazine is necessary. Will their target readers actually buy it from the newsstand once it hits issue three or four... or will the love affair die, like it did with Cargo?"

Magazine Death Pool is a good reminder that technology companies aren't the only ventures that go belly up with alarming frequency. My injured arms prevented me from clicking through the whole damn photo gallery but I didn't see mention of the last two mags I wrote for, Absolute New York (which won a photo award recently) and CMO, which went belly up within a few months of each other. (The editors at both magazines were a joy to work for and I miss them all. Sniff. CMO does live on as a website and who knows, it may return.) Other late, lamented mags were there, including FamilyPC, Yahoo Internet Life, the Industry Standard and Upside.

And now I understand why the bookstores I visited in New York last month were out of Budget Living. Oops!

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:10 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2006

Disturbing Amazon Reviewers

It's been a very exciting time here at Casa Pain Management. First, I found out that my computer-related injuries, charmingly called "mouse arm" here in Sweden, may be carpal tunnel syndrome and may require surgery. (Kids, don't ignore those twitches.) Then my lower back turned on me. It was something like the scene in Alien in which everything appears to be fine, until one of the crew members starts screaming in agony and an ugly critter bursts out of his abdomen. No alien actually clawed its way out of my back, but it sure as hell felt like one was trying.

After several days of bed rest and effective if boring drugs, I'm back, temporarily at least, at the computer armed with three things: a headset, a voice-recognition program and a substitute-swear-word regimen created by my daughter (my pain-provoked outbursts didn't impress her much). I'm allowed to say ship, kit or cheddar but shit is officially off-limits. As it should be, since it's not included in the vocabulary of my program. (I'm going to try to teach it, but don't tell her.)

Anyway, late last night I stumbled upon the dark spawn of Jeff Bezos' community-building tactics: disturbing Amazon reviewers. These are reviewers who appear to be twisted, cranky or worse. I know tons of people have spent practically their entire lives analyzing Amazon and its citizen reviewers but not me. So I was unprepared for the amount of raw weirdness masquerading as chirpy reviews.

Today's featured reviewer uses her real name on Amazon, but it would be mean to include it here. Read the excerpts below and then judge for yourself: Is Reviewer X scary, sad or refreshingly feisty?

From review of Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science by M.G. Lord:

"This little book tells all about the unlikely beginnings of the JPL, going from science fiction to science fact. My son is a patsy for NASA and takes large groups of young people on tours at this Lab and they stay for days on end. He too will feel what it is to die young when they think he knows too much.

"Like Ms. Lord's grandfather whose door would not open, but two others escaped, before the train demolished the car and dragged him a long way down the track. Her father was only 46 when he died but he looks like an old man. That's what leaks from nuclear and atomic production will do for you. Maybe Jeff will last one more year. He's already having false heart attack symptoms."

Poor Jeff. His life can't be easy. From a review of An Unfinished Marriage by Joan Anderson:

"She feels that 'true learning comes from our own impulses' -- please! When will this person grow up? This book is her sequel. 'Every beginning is always a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.' If her marriage was so bad that she had to go to sea for a year, I wonder what Robin did while she was gone. He'd be a fool to languish in his new job, wondering where he had gone wrong; could be she was the person responsible for all the mess. She was like a peregrine falcon who scavenges off others or perhaps a green-winged teal, called a wigeon. She was not a normal woman, not forgiving and understanding. A man goes where his job is. Christine refused to follow Jeff to his job until she got pregnant. Joan was too old for that ploy."

From a review of the audio CD of High Plains Tango: A Novel by Robert James Waller:

"The Indian Flute Player, like son Jeff, charms the desert animals around the ceremonial fires. Carlisle fights city hall (if there be such in the western small towns) and this one is forever changed by one man. There is a triangle with a waitress in addition to the woman he calls a witch, which makes it decidely uneven. Carlisle, after all, is college educated, but like all men like to indulge in the lower-class women on occasion."

Last but not least from a review of Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door by Lynne Truss:

"My pet peeve is the noisy popcorn eater at the movie theaters. Since it would be counterproductive to complain to the manager, as the theaters get big bucks for those supersize containers of popcorn, I've had to just get up and leave. No one can enjoy a movie when the person sitting behind him continues to chomp on their popcorn without regard to the other moviegoers after a certain time. If I have a small popcorn which I can't consume during the loud previews, I save the rest to eat later in private. Not many people would be that thoughtful; they paid for it and they will eat it as they please. Manners has nothing to do with it -- it is their right."

Gentle reviewer, I beg you: just once, finish your popcorn. It might help.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2006

Cybersquabbles in Sweden

Many things about Sweden remain a mystery to me. Here's one example. Earlier in the week a freelance journalist named Mustafa Can revealed the existence of a “secret” listserv that included journalists, psychologists, business leaders, politicians and literary celebs among its members. Can wrote the article with all the subtlety of the prose found in the latest bodice-ripper. The story in Dagens Nyheter was titled "Uber bullying on the net" and began like this (my translation): “Do you think hate is a fantastic feeling? Do you want to belong to a chosen group of people who consider themselves physically and mentally above everyone else?”

You can tell that the article was written outside of the United States, because the answer to the second question would be self evident: Why yes, I would like to belong to a chosen group of people who consider themselves physically and mentally above everyone else. The United States is a hotbed of private little cliques, it’s blanketed with country clubs and other private organizations that are all about feeling superior whatever more noble objective their rules and regulations proclaim.

But such is not the Swedish way. Swedes may discriminate against people born in other countries or who bear foreign-sounding names but they do not, and cannot, think of themselves as any better than anyone else. At least, not publicly. That all Swedes are equal, or are supposed to be, is deeply embedded in this culture. That's fine by me. That's one of the many things I like about this country. But I can't be shocked, or scandalized, or even especially horrified by the discovery that a composer and writer named Alexander Bard has maintained a private listserv called the Elite list for the past 15 years that supposedly devotes itself to sex-and-drugs gossip and welcomes new members with an e-mail that claims “the lowest common denominator for the members of the Elite list is their physical and mental perfection, … self-confidence, and interest in leading electronic discussions with other beautiful and interesting people with a large and healthy self-confidence.”

(Are we surprised that the guy who launched a list celebrating beautiful people is bald? Maybe Elite was meant to be a confidence-booster.)

Can wonders how well-known journalists can participate in an e-mail list with people they may cover as part of their work, a perfectly reasonable question. Since this story was published on Wednesday, one journalist has lost a job over her membership and Can got a nasty, nasty anonymous SMS threatening to make his life hell forever (I'm thinking that Bard guy and/or his minions must have no sense of humor whatsoever.) Meanwhile, most of the actual Swedish cultural and business elite--the bosses anyway--have yawned collectively and claimed a private e-mail list is not exactly a threat to democracy.

No, the electronic threat to democracy is not the Elite list. According to some, that dubious honor belongs to the anonymous mud-slinging e-mails trashing the head of Sweden's Moderate Party, Fredrik Reinfeldt. It doesn't really matter what the messages claim, except that they claim he's doing something illegal and were sent to journalists, among others.

Reinfeldt has told reporters the e-mail campaign is an attempt to influence national elections. Turns out he's right. The party in power, the Social Democrats, ‘fessed up that an unnamed official is behind the campaign, which is against party rules, and a really bad thing, yadda yadda yadda. The Local website is dubbing it "Sweden's Watergate." According to Dagens Nyheter, this is the first time electronic mud-slinging has surfaced in a Swedish political campaign.

Bet it won’t be the last. So-called whisper campaigns have become a well-entrenched, if disturbing, part of political campaigns the world over. Today's lesson: You can run but you can't hide. The least endearing aspects of human nature will find you wherever you go.

(Yup, I'm on an extended cliché tear. Holler if I 've missed any.)

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2006

Pitching the Press: LG Mobile Phones Edition

Recently a PR practioner mailed me (and presumably many others) the following pitch. Is it good? Is it bad? Weigh in with your own critique.

"Once again, LG Mobile Phones is at the forefront of innovation in marketing efforts and initiatives. In particular, LG has entered two realms of marketing opportunity previously left untapped by mobile phone manufacturers.

"By aligning with superstar music producer Jermaine Dupri and Grammy nominated recording artist Mariah Carey, and developing 'LG Presents the Mariah Carey and Jermaine Dupri Post Grammy Celebration,' LG phones is intertwined with the entertainment industry on a level never before seen, with both performers and entertainment media.

"With their sponsorship of Cirque de Soleil's 'Delirium' tour, LG will have an intimate presence with the upwardly mobile, young professional audience that Cirque de Soleil performances tend to attract. These marketing initiatives have to potential to greatly expand LG's presence in key (and hard to reach) celebrity, young male and female demographics.

" 'LG Presents the Mariah Carey and Jermaine Dupri Post Grammy Celebration' was the hottest post-Grammy event in Hollywood. This exclusive event was attended by high-profile entertainers including Britney Spears, Anthony Keidis, Mischa Barton, Cedric the Entertainer, Carmen Electra and many more.

"All of these celebrities received their invitation on a video message featuring Mariah Carey and Jermaine Dupri, which was pre-loaded on a 'V' and sent to each individual. This opportunity offered LG the chance to supply product to the entertainment industry's most key influencers, with custom phones having been gifted to the two celebrity hosts (hi-res images of these one-of-a-kind 'V's by LG and the phone invitation are available upon request) in addition to the unique invitation.

"Another unique partnership that LG has forged during this process is with Red Engine Jeans, who have created a very tasteful co-branded jean that was included in the celebrity gift bags (images available.) Furthermore, LG's presence at this event--along with their entertainment devices like the 'V'--will give them exposure from entertainment media outlets that traditionally do not cover consumer products.

"Cirque de Soleil has long been one of the most surreal and mythical theater experiences available to audiences in North America. By signing on as one of three title sponsors, LG Mobile Phones will have the opportunity to generate greater brand awareness with the aspiring professional adults and sophisticated, affluent audience that attend Cirque performances. This 64 market tour allows LG to promote it's brand in cities and regions that are largely considered afterthoughts by mass marketing campaigns, essentially taking the form of a high-profile grassroots initiative."

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)

February 05, 2006

Danish Cartoon Clash Continues

A team of four reporters wrote a great piece for today's British Observer on the roots of the cartoon clash and how a tiny (circ. 100,000) newspaper triggered global rioting with 12 crude cartoons of Mohammad.

"The initial publication of the cartoons brought no response other than some angry letters. But when in mid-October two of the artists received death threats, the menaces were widely reported and rekindled debate, prompting vicious, anti-Muslim comments on Danish talk shows. Coming soon after a series of new, strict laws relating to marriage and citizenship, enforcing obligatory Danish lessons and clamping down on imams, the row plugged straight into pre-existing tensions. A minor storm was on its way to becoming much bigger."

"...One showed the prophet with a bomb as a head, another with either horns or half a halo growing out of his head, a third showed a ragged line of suicide bombers arriving in heaven to be greeted by an anxious-looking prophet telling them: 'Stop stop, we ran out of virgins!'. Crude in execution and thought, the cartoons offended not merely because they breached the Islamic prohibition of representations of Muhammad, but because they depicted the prophet, seen as a man of peace and justice by Muslims, as a man of terror and violence."

The Observer explains how after the Danish newspaper editor decided to apologize (in a nearly insulting way, if you ask me), the editor of Berlin's Die Welt newspaper decided to republish the cartoons (which also ran in France and some other European papers) partly as a defense of press freedom and partly as a response to what he saw as double standards.

"The Arab world couldn't have it both ways. Anti-semitism is rampant in much of the 'hypocritical' Middle East, the editor wrote, with Jewish rabbis depicted on prime-time Syrian TV as cannibals. In this context, he felt poking fun at Muhammad was fair enough."

But was it fair? Simon Jenkins nails the issue in the British Sunday Times today. "Despite Britons’ robust attitude to religion, no newspaper would let a cartoonist depict Jesus Christ dropping cluster bombs, or lampoon the Holocaust. Pictures of bodies are not carried if they are likely to be seen by family members. Privacy and dignity are respected, even if such restraint is usually unknown to readers. Over every page hovers a censor, even if he is graced with the title of editor.

"To imply that some great issue of censorship is raised by the Danish cartoons is nonsense. They were offensive and inflammatory. The best policy would have been to apologise and shut up. For Danish journalists to demand “Europe-wide solidarity” in the cause of free speech and to deride those who are offended as “fundamentalists . . . who have a problem with the entire western world” comes close to racial provocation. We do not go about punching people in the face to test their commitment to non-violence. To be a European should not involve initiation by religious insult."

Exactly. Exactly. Adding insult to injury, of course, was that tiny matter of the Danish prime minister refusing to see 11 (eleven!) ambassadors from Islamic countries who wanted to discuss the issue with him. Snubbing them might have played well to local voters but making them welcome and actually listening to their concerns at the first opportunity would have been a good way to model the virtues that Westerners supposedly hold dear. It might even have dampened the outrage that led, early this morning, to an attack on the Danish Embassy in Beirut. (The Swedish embassy was also damaged in the fire, and reportedly 18 people were injured.)

It would be nice to think that politicians and newspaper editors are learning something from this. But I'm skeptical.

"Of all the casualties of globalism, religious sensibility is the most hurtful," writes Jenkins. "...It is clearly hard for westerners to comprehend the dismay these gestures cause Muslims. The question is not whether Muslims should or should not 'grow up' or respect freedom of speech. It is whether we truly want to share a world in peace with those who have values and religious beliefs different from our own. The demand by foreign journalists that British newspapers compound their offence shows that moral arrogance is as alive in the editing rooms of northern Europe as in the streets of Falluja. That causing religious offence should be regarded a sign of western machismo is obscene."

It's also stupid. It completely plays into the hands of extremists who find it much easier to convince fellow Muslims that Westerners are unholy pigs who deserve eradication when we ridicule and insult their most holy symbol and then snub 11 representatives of Islamic nations.

Of course, there are extremists on both sides. Here's the response one guy has to a picture of young Danes lighting candles to encourage a dialog between the Danish newspaper and Muslim protestors.

"These misguided souls are unable – or unwilling – to see that with Islamists no dialogue is possible. With Islamists you either accept their outlook or else. We in the West settle our differences through debate and democratic process. They do it through chicanery and brutality."

This doesn't have to be a pissing contest. But extremists on both sides want to make it one. There's no guarantee, though, that it's a contest the Western world can win.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:56 PM | Comments (2)

February 03, 2006

Danish Newspaper Sparks Culture Clash

Good morning, class. Today's lesson is a thought experiment in the responsible exercise of free expression.

Let's pretend that the New York Times magazine wants to publish an article about the reluctance of some Catholic families to allow their sons to be alter boys in the wake of allegations that several priests in a particular parish sexually abused many children.

Next, let's pretend that NYT magazine's art director really liked to push the envelope, so he or she asks Andres Serrano to illustrate the feature article. The resulting photo, "Lube Priest," shows a half-empty jar of Vaseline, a full set of Rosary beads sullied by drops of some unknown liquid, a pair of size-6 Superman briefs, a crumpled black shirt with a clerical collar and a small photo of the Pope in an ornate gold frame.

The photo shows these objects in artful disarray on the floor as though they've been tossed there in a hurry. The foot of a bed, with a lump of twisted sheets, towers over this twisted still life in the background of the photo. Although we see only a fragment of the bed, it seems enormous and ominous and it overpowers the other objects. After publication of the article and illustration, some art critics hail "Lube Priest" as a masterpiece, others dimiss it as drivel and ACLU types defend the photo and newspaper by invoking the Constitution.

Since this is a thought experiment, your assignment is to imagine how Christians, Catholic and otherwise, might respond. Would they:

1. Salute the New York Times for fully exercising the rights of a free press by commissioning this illustration?

2. Personally regret the actions of the New York Times but support it publicly because of American respect and veneration for an independent press and press freedom?

3. Castigate the New York Times editors as atheist lunkheads and inundate them with sharply worded criticism, anonymous bomb threats, cancelled subscriptions, mass prayer protests on the sidewalk outside its building and other expressions of extreme outrage?

I suspect many people would choose number 3. I'm guessing a commissioned illustration with sticky Rosary beads, the Pope, a priest's collar and little boy's underpants would create a massive, immediate uproar. People would call for the illustration to be removed from the newspaper's web site, for the original to be destroyed, for the newspaper to apologize for its deeply offensive act and for the art director to be fired.

I would hope no Catholics expressed their anger violently. But some deeply religious anti-abortionists have killed doctors and bombed clinics, so I suppose it's both possible and indefensible.

In any case, I suspect Christians might explain why their anger is justified by saying something like this:

"In calling for an end to the display of this blasphemy ... people were not asking that their fragile sense of identity or boundaries be left undisturbed, but that their God be respected. ..."

Or they might say, if critics insisted on defending Serrano's art and its publication, something like this:

"To think a religious object can be extracted from its context and ‘purified,' ‘restored' or ‘improved' by doing to it something unthinkable among adherents of that tradition, is condescension. ..."

In fact, that's exactly what some people did say in response to Serrano's real-life "Piss Christ." And I'm thinking that outsiders, including non-Catholics and agnostics, understand why "Piss Christ" was deeply offensive to Catholics. And they would understand why Christians would be livid if the New York Times had specifically commissioned "Piss Christ."

Everybody with me so far? Good. Now, deliberately commissioning an illustration that a large number of people are guaranteed to find blasphemous and, thus, deeply offensive rarely occurs to editors but apparently it happens. An editor at Jyllands-Posten in Denmark heard about the difficulty a Danish author had in finding an illustrator for a children's book about Muhammad. Artists were afraid to illustrate the book for fear that they might be threatened. That's because images of Muhammad are considered blasphemous by most Muslims.

But Denmark isn't Iraq or Iran, so why the hell should Danish illustrators be too cowed to whip out a few editorial cartoons featuring Mohammad? I suspect the editor's thinking might have run alone that line and contributed to the newspaper's decision last September to publish an article about the issue, along with 12 caricatures of Mohammad it commissioned as illustrations.

This was not an especially wise move. Some of the illustrators now have guards. A boycott of Arla products has cost the Danish-Swedish dairy company millions. The newspaper has received bomb threats, Scandinavian citizens have been asked to leave certain areas, and it's possible that someone will die because of these stupid, stereotypical, offensive (one Mohammad has a bomb in his turban) and, yes, blasphemous images.

Several European newspapers have republished the images in support of the Danish newspaper, which issued on of those lame, Harry Shearer-ish type of non-apology apologies a few days back. Several other newspapers are under pressure to run the illustrations but have wisely refused. One British newspaper reader whined that the papers kowtowing to a misguided sense of political correctness. Hmm. Not everybody in the U.K. supports the monarchy but the mainstream papers don't run Photoshopped pictures of a nude Queen having sex with a servant. Is that political correctness? I don't think so.

There's an enormous cultural clash here. Westerners don't get it. Illustrations are no big deal to us. I've seen comments that Muslims should just "get over it." But that's like asking Britains to think it's okay if the London Times uses the Queen in some horrifying way or asking Catholics to be cool about a naked Pope and a poodle shown in Time magazine. Would we take such images in stride? I don't think so.

The New York Times piece on the controversy gives short shrift to the seriousness of the issue. "An international dispute over European newspaper cartoons deemed blasphemous by some [my emphasis] Muslims gained momentum on Thursday when gunmen threatened the European Union offices in Gaza and more European papers pointedly published the drawings as an affirmation of freedom of speech."

The New York Times reporter notes that he conflict "is the latest manifestation of growing tensions between Europe and the Muslim world as the Continent struggles to absorb a fast-expanding Muslim population whose customs and values are often at odds with Europe's secular societies." But not so fast. The Muslim population in Denmark is a lousy 4 percent. Maybe the Times could have mentioned that fact, but no.

The AP's Richard N. Ostling does a much better job of setting the controversy in context: "The spreading Muslim protests against newspapers that reprinted cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad stem from the deepest religious roots. Islam forbids visual depictions of the prophet, and regards violations by Muslims as highly sinful and by non-Muslims as the ultimate insult. The prohibition is in part an application of the Koran's strict opposition to idolatry. ...

"The Koran does not specifically address artwork of Muhammad, and through history a few Muslims have painted him. But the ban has been virtually universal in all branches of the faith from its earliest days. ... Zahik Bukhari, director of Georgetown University's American Muslim Studies Program, says the cartoons, first published in Denmark, constitute a triple offense for Muslims: first by depicting Muhammad at all; second by treating him disrespectfully; and third because 'in the present circumstance it is a symbol of the clash of civilizations that they want to insult the prophet and the whole of Islam.' "

Last I checked, the practioners of a faith get to decide what's blasphemous and what's not blasphemous. That is not up to outsiders to determine, no matter how much we want to.

The Danish paper ought to issue a real apology, not a pretend apology. According to one of the illustrators who works in the paper's art department, the newspaper's editor is a jerk who was itching to be provocative. Well, the editor was provocative all right. Not smart, not thoughtful, not educational. Just provocative. And now Norway, Sweden, Denmark and their citizens get to pay the price. Thanks a fucking pantload, as Denise Caruso might say.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)

January 31, 2006

Google, China + Business as Usual

Google's under fire for its decision to follow Chinese law and censor some search results. This isn't news to any technology fan with a pulse. But I've been a little taken aback at the volume of the outcry over Google's new service in China. But then, perhaps it's anything but surprising that the blabosphere gets its knickers in a knot over the intellectual insult of restricted search results and not, say, the broken bodies of the people in China, Mexico, and elsewhere who churn out a big chunk of the goods we buy.

People I respect are among those critical of Google's move, but I don't get it. The company is simply practicing business as usual and, unlike Microsoft or Yahoo, without directly harming any individual Chinese citizen thus far (although, lord knows, that could change in the future).

Google isn't Enron. It's not Halliburton or even Hill & Knowlton. So why the enormous outcry? I think it's so fierce partly because it feels so personal. Journalists and bloggers can't imagine what it's like to sit inside a sweatshop sewing name-brand jeans with bleeding fingers. But we use Google services every day of the week.

And so we gnash our teeth, wax indignant and cite Google's infamous "do no evil" creed in support of our case. But it's beyond naive for an adult to take that language at face value and believe that anyone or anything outside of Google might be allowed to define its meaning. Some people are shocked, shocked that Google is participating in legal commerce. But that's the idea, after all.

On Friday Google's senior policy counsel, Andrew McLaughlin, claimed the company debated the issue for years and ultimately decided that "filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. Failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world's population, however, does so far more severely."

That spin wildly overstates the case. As McLaughlin himself pointed out, Google.com is a bad experience for users in the Republic of China because the service is slow, incomplete and unavailable to users there about 10 percent of the time. Sucky service does not equal "failing to offer Google search at all," however, no matter how far you stretch it. But unlike the new service, Google.com wasn't optimized for Chinese users. Google's China baby will be fast, available and, yes, incomplete. The company decided it was a fair tradeoff.

Critics don't agree and they don't have to, but the company's reasoning makes sense to me. Whether Google can escape additional complicity with a horrific regime remains to be seen. The slippery slope is, after all, damn slippery. In the meantime, there's ample opportunity to be outraged over additional legal business dealings in China and elsewhere, and Google bashers should get a grip. The idea of censored search results will hardly be a surprise to Chinese Web surfers, although it seems as though the company could do a much better job of flagging it.

Google *is* a scary company but not because of its China policy. I don't use Google mail, for example, because I think it's creepy and potentially dangerous for any entity--animal, vegetable or mineral, government or corporation--to have access to all my e-mail, all my contacts, plus details on practically every step I take in cyberspace via cookies that track my IP address during all my Google searches.

It's not much fun to be seen as Darth Vader in the public imagination. But Google execs had best get used to it. Their vast ambitions, coupled with the nearly inevitable arrogance that so often builds within enormously successful companies, virtually guarantee that a Google backlash will continue to build.

It's how the world works. And maybe that's just as well.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 29, 2006

Glenn Fleishman Stalks Corporate Spin

I've long admired Glenn Fleishman for lots of reasons. He's really nice, he's really smart, he writes well (not as common as you might expect, even among professional writers) and he's alarmingly prolific. The freelance journalist, book author and blogger behind seven blogs is soft launching his eighth, about radio and the future of AM and FM right here.

Over at Wi-Fi Net News, Glenn has been covering the struggle to create municipal wireless networks for ages. He recently weighed in on plans (hopes?) to build a 1500-square-mile wireless network across Silicon Valley and highlights the gap between reality and the highly polished talking points parroted by corporate critics of municipal wireless.

“ 'Andrew Johnson, a Comcast Bay Area spokesman,…said companies that have spent billions of dollars to build wired networks shouldn’t be undermined by taxpayer funds focused toward a rival.' "

As Glenn notes, "Interestingly, virtually no municipal RFPs now involve taxpayer funds, but incumbents continue to play from that script. This RFP will involve roughy $40,000 from a few dozen cities."

” ‘The free market should be allowed to play out,’ he said. ‘A municipal subsidy, or a provision of a municipal WiFi network would not be the best use of taxpayer funds.’

"In other words, regardless of the fact that broadband firms have been spreading the notion that high-speed access is critical to individual businesses and entire communities, those communities have no right to ensure that they have what they want if they’re paying for it directly despite massive public subsidies paid to incumbents, which are never mentioned in the same breath as the 'billions' spent."

Exactly. Because if it's good for Comcast, it's good for the nation. Just keep saying it, no matter how bogus. Much of the time, spin wins.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)

December 21, 2005

Conservative Punditry Pays (As Usual)

"As Tom DeLay became a king of campaign fundraising, he lived like one too. He visited cliff-top Caribbean resorts, golf courses designed by PGA champions and four-star restaurants - all courtesy of donors who bankrolled his political money empire.

"Over the past six years, the former House majority leader and his associates have visited places of luxury most Americans have never seen, often getting there aboard corporate jets arranged by lobbyists and other special interests.

"Public documents reviewed by The Associated Press tell the story: at least 48 visits to golf clubs and resorts with lush fairways; 100 flights aboard company planes; 200 stays at hotels, many world-class; and 500 meals at restaurants, some averaging nearly $200 for a dinner for two."

It's entertaining to read embittered AP writers carp about Tom DeLay's lavish lifestyle but it shouldn't come as a shock. Rulers are supposed to exist on a higher plane than the mere mortals who elect and support them. That's one of the reasons Time magazine was so relieved to see the last of Jimmy Carter's cardigan and embrace Ronald Reagan's imperial presidency. It was a long time ago and my memory may be going but I vividly recall reading an exceptionally gushing article about Reagan's stylish inauguration. The subtext was obvious: Washington breathes sigh of relief as low-rent peanut farmer and spouse slink home, replaced by classy, more appropriate power couple.

So Mr. DeLay represents business as usual, allbeit cranked up a notch or two compared to some of his peers. Apparently paying columnists--at least, conservative ones--is business as usual, too. Even more than I realized.

"A senior fellow at the Cato Institute resigned from the libertarian think tank on Dec. 15 after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients. Doug Bandow, who writes a syndicated column for Copley News Service, told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s."

How'd I miss that gravy train? Nobody offered me a bonus for my columns at Fortune.com or FamilyPC. Damn, I should have interned with the National Review instead of Mother Jones in college.

" 'It was a lapse of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it,' Bandow said from a California hospital, where he's recovering from recent knee surgery." One is tempted to hope the surgery came after a kneecapping by indignant members of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Or Jon Carroll even. But that seems unlikely. As Dave Barry once noted, working journalists tend to have poor do-it-yourself skills.

"Bandow isn't the only think-tanker to have received payments from Abramoff for writing articles. Peter Ferrara, a senior policy adviser at the conservative Institute for Policy Innovation, says he, too, took money from Abramoff to write op-ed pieces boosting the lobbyist's clients. 'I do that all the time,' Ferrara says. 'I've done that in the past, and I'll do it in the future.'

"Ferrara, who has been an influential conservative voice on Social Security reform, among other issues, says he doesn't see a conflict of interest in taking undisclosed money to write op-ed pieces because his columns never violated his ideological principles."

You know the punchline: That's because he doesn't have any.

"Ferrara's boss has a very different take on the Abramoff op-ed writing than did his peers at Cato. 'If somebody pinned me down and said, Do you think this is wrong or unethical? I'd say no,' says Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation. Giovanetti says critics are applying a 'naive purity standard' to the op-ed business. 'I have a sense that there are a lot of people at think tanks who have similar arrangements.' "

I'm beginning to get that sense myself. I'm lovin' the logic here. Other people do it, so it's okay. I'd write it anyway, so it's okay. I truly believe it, so it's okay.

If these payments are on the up and up, then why weren't they public knowledge to begin with? Why were there no disclosure statements so the poor saps who read the columns and watch these guys preen during TV appearances and listen to their self-important utterances over the radio know exactly where the pundits get their paychecks?

And if payments on the side are such a fine practice, if they are simply rewards for doing what the pundits would be doing in any case, then why aren't other people getting them? Why aren't you getting a little extra from those nice lobbyists for the good job you did last month? Why isn't the grocery clerk getting a little extra for her great bagging skills? Or your doctor? (Oh, right. Maybe she is getting a little something extra, although not from Abramoff.)

There's a term of art for people like Bandow, Ferrara and Giovanetti but sleaze doesn't entirely do them justice. These folks aren't journalists or editors but they play them on TV. As a result, their slimy dealings taint actual journalists and editors. Which sucks for a lot of reasons, including the fact that we're plenty capable of screwing up on our own. So guys, give it a rest.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:03 PM | Comments (1)

December 15, 2005

The Ghostwriter in the Machine

"Last week, the New England Journal of Medicine admitted that a 2000 article it published highlighting the advantages of Merck & Co.'s Vioxx painkiller omitted information about heart attacks among patients taking the drug. The journal has said the deletions were made by someone working from a Merck computer. Merck says the heart attacks happened after the study's cutoff date and it did nothing wrong." Merck should have tried a more fashionable excuse and claimed, say, that a company editor mistook the study for a Wikkipedia entry.

Merck's not the only one suffering. Poor Michael Anello. Tuesday's front-page story in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) probably didn't much help his freelance writing career. "Ghost Story" leads by describing a 2001 article in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases that was ostensibly written by one Alex J. Brown, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Why then was it included as one of Anello's writing samples on his business web site? Because he wrote it. Most of it, anyway. The pharma companies have plenty of spinmeisters on hand for the pesky press but Anello is a solo practioner. Imagine picking up the phone and having a WSJ reporter on the other end. Yikes!

Anna Wilde Mathews writes about ghostwriters as the "open secret" of medical publishing. "Many of the articles that appear in scientific journals under the bylines of prominent academics are actually written by ghostwriters in the pay of drug companies. These seemingly objective articles, which doctors around the world use to guide their care of patients, are often part of a marketing campaign by companies to promote a product or play up the condition it treats."

A handy chart illustrates how pharmaceutical companies fund medical researchers to study their products, then hire medical marketing and communication companies to oversee the production of articles based on those studies and bearing the name of those researchers as primary author even though, in some cases, they may not have added so much as a comma. (The comma example is mine, based on a conversation I had with a friend in the industry.) Talk about your closed system: it's sheer genius at work and the WSJ has excerpts from various documents to prove it.

The bad PR about Merck and the New England Journal of Medicine is probably just a brief hiccip for this smoothly humming marketing machine. As Wilde Mathews points out, ghostwriters help scientists (it's easier to author lots of articles if you don't have to actually write them all), journal editors (it's easier to edit clear, professionally written articles than amateur prose) and the pharmaceutical companies that underwrite them. You can bet pharma cos pay for approved marketing messages and approved marketing messages only, no matter what the companies claim publicly. I mean, would you pay to be trashed in print, even if the damaging facts were true?

Me neither.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2005

Late to Wikki Mudslinging

I am so late to the Wikki mudslinging festivities. I had no idea Adam Curry had been buffing his image on Wikkipedia by judiciously editing a post on the history of podcasting. But since anybody gets to be an editor, why not?

Which means he's probably not the only one. As one wag claims (gotta scroll way down), "In related news, a bearded Al Gore has been holed up in a log cabin in Tennessee, wearing only a pair of tattered boxer shorts, where he has been secretly editing Wikipedia entries to make sure he gets props for inventing the Internet."

Poor Al, stuck with the myth that won't die.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)

Wiki Author Apologizes, Would the Tabloids?

The guy who posted "false and scandalous entries" about a journalist on Wikkipedia as a joke has not only apologized for his unfortunate behavior but also resigned from his job. This is part of the scandalous entry, now excised from Wikkipedia: "John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven."

There's more, all of it nonsense, about the journalist's move to the Soviet Union, starting a PR firm (no, that wasn't the scandalous part), and other phony tidbits. Seigenthaler was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant and one of the pallbearers at Kennedy's funeral so the 78-year-old was angry and horrified to discover that the lies in Wikkipedia had spread to Answers.com and Reference.com. It didn't make him any happier to discover that it might be impossible, without a lawsuit, to discover the hoaxster's identity.

The responsible party came clean without any prodding by a lawsuit and appears to be a stand-up guy in several ways. "Brian Chase, 38, a manager at a small delivery service in Nashville, presented a letter of apology Friday explaining his role to the journalist, John Seigenthaler, a former editor of Nashville's Tennessean and a founder of the First Amendment Center there," notes the piece in USA Today. "Seigenthaler urged Chase's boss, James White, not to accept his resignation."

Here's the baffling part: Brian Chase voluntarily identified himself as the author, apologized in writing, then resigned from his job over this incident, which appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with his employment. Zip. Nada. Noll. Meanwhile, media professionals (let's not call them journalists) over at the National Enquirer made hay on Friday over the alledged overdose and collapse of Michael Jackson, everybody's favorite future dead celeb. I know about this only because my kid voraciously reads the lurid front pages of the Swedish tabloids every chance she gets. On Saturday, as we stood in line to pay for our groceries at a local market, she kept darting away to read a little more from the Expressen's front page, which featured a huge pic of Jackson and a screaming headline: "Michael Jackson Found Lifeless After Overdose." (Here's the web version.)

Because I only saw the headline, I thought Jackson was a goner. Later, when I read the piece online, it claimed that the guy was basically in the hospital fighting for his life, "according to several American media" (my translation) but not, as it happens, Wikkipedia. I kept reading, and discovered that "several" apparently meant two: the National Enquirer and the Drudge Report. Now anybody who pays attention knows that Matt Drudge mostly links to celebrity news and does not usually constitute a source in his own right. (Sometimes he breaks a story but rarely and he's not regarded in the industry as the most reliable source.) In this case it's very clear that Drudge linked to the National Enquirer's report, which promptly got yanked. Traces of the story remain but I can't locate even a Google cache of the original. It wasn't hard to find a story disputing the claim.

Jackson is one sad, scary, messed-up guy. I wouldn't want him in my house or near my neighborhood. But his character is not the issue when it comes to accurate reporting. Jackson's spokesperson has denied the overdose report. That hardly resolves the issue. No offense intended to Jackson's mouthpiece but it's not unknown for press handlers to misspeak on occasion. If the National Enquirer's report turned out to be bogus, I wonder what would happen. Would the upstanding media professionals at the Enquirer and Expressen demonstrate as much honor as Brian Chase, media amateur, by apologizing and then resigning?

I think we both know the answer. Not a chance.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:18 PM | Comments (0)

Web Notes: PDF Files

Please stop assaulting me with unidentified PDF files. Hell, with PDF files generally. Not you, gentle reader, those other folks out there. Those web wieners who've decided that PDF files are so darn swell there's no need to identify links that lead to them. Which means that innocent visitors looking for more info click hopefully on what appears to be a normal html link and then blam, there's yet another unwanted PDF file on the ground. That, my friend, is crappy marketing and the result of anal-retentive management.

Here's the thing: I want to know that there's a PDF file on the other end of the link *before* I click on it because PDF files require both time and space, items that are often in short supply here at Casa Branscum. It is true that web wieners are not committing rape, robbery or arson in this case, merely thoughtlessness, but it's annoying nonetheless.

Speaking of annoying, why is so much perfectly innocent information, especially info provided for the press, in PDF format anyway? Why must I download a PDF file to get background info on an executive instead of quickly checking an html page with that info? In Adobe's case, it's because the company developed Acrobat and the format. But a supposed global leader in Internet media and market research doesn't have that excuse--and by the way, Nielsen/NetRatings, time to start labeling those Latest Breaking Press Releases as PDF files, doncha think?

There are many fine uses for the PDF format. But it is not the universal web solvent and not an appropriate format for press releases. I'm not the only critic of this practice. It's just dumb, so stop already.

In unrelated news, I'm happy to report that grillz is now a more popular search term for enticing people to Stuffola than amputee. What a relief that Stuffola is finally attracting a less disturbed group of visitors (not that Stuffola has a problem with being disturbed). Welcome!

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2005

Spinning Iraq: Immoral, Ineffective or Both?

Why am I not surprised to discover that the U.S. military is paying a contractor to manufacture pro-U.S. articles that Iraqi publications are secretly paid to publish? That's right: Because the administration did virtually the same damn thing here in the United States. As you may recall, the main difference is that the secret beneficiaries of taxpayer largesse here in the U.S. were freelancer (or freelancers, who knows?) and columnists rather than newspapers and radio stations. (Speaking of largesse, The Hill notes that many of the former colleagues of bribe-glutton and ex-Republication Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham "are mulling what to do with tens of thousands of dollars they received in campaign contributions from Cunningham’s co-conspirators." Hey, life's a bitch.)

"As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq. The articles, written by U.S. military 'information operations' troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times."

Kudos to LAT reporters Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi for their scoop, although you gotta wonder if it was practically handed to them given one clearly pissed-off anonymous source: " 'Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it,' said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media." He or she must be late to the party. All the reigning rulers plant propaganda.

The lucky contractor churning out what the LAT calls "basically factual" but one-sided news stories is the Lincoln Group. The unsurprisingly closed-mouth company "won a $100 million contract with the Special Operations Command to assist with psychological operations," according to GovExec.com, which covers the Lincoln Group's sketchy history and the founder's Republican ties. (You just know the author got carpel tunnel trying to google the company into submission.) The 30-something founder, it turns out, has a Silicon Valley connection. Hey Dan Gillmor, know anything about Christian Bailey? He apparently moved to SF in the late 1990s, started an e-commerce company called Express Action in 1999, sold it, and moved on to better and clearly bigger things.

There are a couple of amusing items in the LAT piece.

"The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media ... comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled 'The Role of Press in a Democratic Society.' Standards vary widely at Iraqi newspapers, many of which are shoestring operations."

Even though many of them are enormous profit-making enterprises, standards must vary widely among U.S. newspapers as well. How else to explain this nifty new reward program? (In the U.S., government propaganda is bad, while corporate propaganda is simply business as usual.) Then there's the following quote, which made me chuckle.

"Daniel Kuehl, an information operations expert at National Defense University at Ft. McNair in Washington, said that he did not believe that planting stories in Iraqi media was wrong. But he questioned whether the practice would help turn the Iraqi public against the insurgency. 'I don't think that there's anything evil or morally wrong with it,' he said. 'I just question whether it's effective.' "

That is the question that has always haunted the people who pay PR practioners, covert or not. But that's not an issue for the Lincoln Group. The client is always right, and the Lincoln Group has 100 million reasons not to question the project. As it happens, I have a real flair for news headlines, especially in Arabic. Just holler, Chris, if you need another freelancer.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)

November 30, 2005

Design Disappointment

Just got back from eyeballing the fashion-designer-decorated Christmas trees at the Birger Jarl hotel, which touts its design credentials with every drop of a press release.

"This is yet another interesting angle of our image, in which Swedish colour, form and design are in focus. The concept allows for many combinations of interaction between people, material and form," claims Marianne Hultberg, Managing Director of Hotel Birger Jarl, in a press release (I'd link but it's a PDF file). "It is especially exciting to be able to unite an old tradition with completely new concepts, to the delight of our guests and everyone in general," she says.

What a disappointment. It happens that I had an errand at Immanual Church, which appears to be part of the complex housing the Birger Jarl. It's not like I made a special trip, in other words, but my ten-year-old could have turned out something more interesting. A colorful, pulsating clump of mini trees made me think of America (except for the ceramic troll in front) but not, say, Design with a capital D. None of them did.

A couple were pretty, so that was something. (There's supposedly one dressed up as a Midsommar Maypole but I didn't spot it.) The Amnesty tree was worthy but dull, a real-life representation of the organization itself. (Hope one of the nice Amnesty volunteers doesn't come into my office right now and beat me to death with an Amnesty-logo-etched drinking glass, even though I deserve it.) One amusing tree was bedecked with tree-shaped air fresheners that had glossy fashion and ad pics glued on the back. But the display, on the whole, sucked. That doesn't make it an ineffective PR ploy, of course. The hotel was able to squeeze ink out of a variety of local newspapers and blogs so I suppose it paid off. But next time, hold a contest, make a big deal out of it and actually give the designers (by donating money to their favorite causes, perhaps?) a reason to feel more passionate about their creations.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:47 PM | Comments (0)

November 29, 2005

Online Sales = Big Butts?

Michael Bazeley of the San Jose Mercury, among others, has reported on the new Pew Internet and American Life Project survey, which estimates that one in six American adults online has sold something through an Internet classified ad or auction site. (The word estimate is mine, btw. Why doesn't every journalist add that qualifier to survey items--what, it's too obvious? I think not.)

"The number of visitors to online classified sites jumped 80 percent from September 2004 to this September, according to data from comScore Media Metrix that was released as part of the Pew study. Craigslist was the most popular classified ads site, with 8.7 million visitors in September. Close behind was Trader Publishing Co., which operates nearly four dozen vehicle, merchandise, housing and employment sites, such as BargainTraderOnline.com and ForRent.com."

As Bazeley notes, "Much has been made about the effect that craigslist has had on newspaper classified advertising" but as far as I can tell, no one has considered the effect that Craigslist, eBay and other online sites may have had on the expanding American waistline. The so-called obesity epidemic has been linked to many factors, including excessive TV, a lack of exercise, the growing size of food portions and even movements in personal income tax rate and in the gender wage gap. So why can't online sales be a contributing factor?

Big butts are unhealthy, however we got them. And now, it turns out, they're unhealthy in an unexpected way. As Jessica Heslam writes in the Boston Herald,"Rapping about big behinds made Sir Mix-A-Lot famous, but a new medical study says those plump rumps don’t do women any good when it comes to getting a shot in the traditional spot. Researchers say a majority of people, especially women, aren’t getting the proper dosage from backside shots because the needle can’t get through the blubber. As few as one in 10 women (and six in 10 men) may be getting proper dosages from injections, said Dr. Victoria Chan of Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Dublin."

CBS News explains why this matters: "The medicine gets injected into the buttock muscles, then filters into nearby blood vessels. Such shots are used for a variety of medicines, including vaccines, painkillers, contraceptives, and antinausea drugs." I may be joking about the online sales-obesity connection but drugs that can't do their job are no fun, especially for women who end up with pregnant or ill as a result.

At least there's one bright spot on the horizon: the obesity rate in Mexico is expected overtake the U.S. rate soon. Alas, no word yet on how their pets rank compared to our pets.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:24 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2005

The Internet Metaphor Battle: Place vs. Plumbing

As mentioned earlier, Bruce Schneier has reported on what he calls the real story behind Sony's rootkit misadventure: "the collusion between big media companies who try to control what we do on our computers and computer-security companies who are supposed to be protecting us." ZDNet's David Berlind agrees that's noteworthy but says the overall digital rights managment situation is the larger issue.

"Sony's rootkit, as bad as it was, isn't the real story. The way the entertainment cartel is applying DRM as a whole is the real story. They're applying DRM in a way that the Sony fiasco was inevitable. This wasn't the first time lack of DRM interoperability manifested itself in the end-user experience in an ugly way, and it won't be the last. ... Unbeknownst to most people, what started with music (let's just say audio) already applies to video and it's not going to stop there."

Where will it stop? With total corporate control if we're not careful, and we're not just talking audio, video and text. That's not how Berlind put it but it's a fair description of the bleak future painted by Doc Searls in the passionate plea for activism pointed to by Berlind. Doc is in rare form and no wonder: he's a modern Paul Revere trying to spur his beloved community to action before it's too late.

"Are you ready to see the Net privatized from the bottom to the top? Are you ready to see the Net's free and open marketplace sucked into a pit of pipes built and fitted by the phone and cable companies and run according to rules lobbied by the carrier and content industries?

"Do you believe a free and open market should be 'Your choice of walled garden' or 'Your choice of silo'? That's what the big carrier and content companies believe. That's why they're getting ready to fence off the frontiers.

"And we're not stopping it."

Doc's scary links document the threat to the Internet as we know it and explains why the words we use are so important.

"In this debate the radicals are the carriers. We need to fight them, just as Larry and crew need to fight the copyright extremists: by re-framing the subject. To start we acknowledge the necessity of the transport metaphor; but also its insufficiency. Of course, at its base level the Net is a system of pipes and packets. But it's not only packets, or 'content' or anything for that matter). Understanding the Net only in transport terms is like understanding civilization in terms of electrical service or human beings only in terms of atoms and molecules. We miss the larger context."

Read Doc's essay, then read his blog for responses and contributions from other folks. I'm no visionary but I worry that Doc is right. After all, corporations do whatever necessary to make a profit. If telcos and cable companies need to gate every little stretch of the Internet to thrive, they'll do it--if we let them. (For a historic perspective on how corporations exercise power, don't miss Ted Nace's book "Gangs of America" for educational and entertaining reading.)

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:43 PM | Comments (1)

November 18, 2005

Sony: Weirder and Weirder

Before the move to Sweden, I envisioned my kid embracing age-old Swedish traditions. I saw her in the woods, picking berries or mushrooms. In summer I imaged her splashing in the Baltic Sea while, in winter months, she'd skate across frozen lakes. Yeah, right.

The global sway of American pop culture had completely escaped my notice before the move. These days I get frequent reminders of it. The one this morning arrived in the form of earnest 11-year-olds swaying on stage while mumbling the lyrics to "Wake Me Up When September Ends" under the considerably more energetic direction of the spiky-haired music teacher at our elementary school. (You haven't lived until you've heard class 5A sing "twenty years has gone so fast.") I like Green Day too but jeez, whatever happened to "Du Gamla, Du Fria"?

Luckily Sweden isn't so Americanized yet that corporate execs here could secretly collect information from customer computers without expecting a jail sentence. Sony's probably big enough to survive this debacle (including lawsuits and more nasty PR) but what about First4Internet, the British company that provided both the flawed copy-protection software and the flawed uninstaller? To the glee of many, it appears that some of the free code used by First4Internet in the digital-rights management software it developed for Sony was used in a way that violated the terms of its copyright. As The Register put it, "The irony of a company using code from someone who circumvented DRM to develop an even nastier form of DRM - without even saying 'Thanks!' - will surely feature in geek trivia quizzes for years to come."

Confused yet? I have been so Andrew Kantor's column in USA Today is a gift of clarity about the degree of evil Sony has wrought. I understood that Sony's DRM format caused a security problem. But not the all-important fact that Sony's patch for "removing" the original software also created a security problem--among other failings. As Kantor explains:

"In order to get the patch, you have to provide your name, e-mail address, and other personal information to Sony. When you finally download the thing, it does the patch thing, and then it installs all sorts of new stuff that Sony doesn't tell you about. And it continues to send your listening habits to Sony and its partners, but now it has a bunch of your personal information too. But wait. Incredibly, there's more. The patch itself, it turns out, opens another big security hole."

Talk about criminal cluelessness. Sony first produced CDs that 1. secretly installed software on your computer, 2. secretly sent Sony information about the songs you listened to, 3. created a security hole in your PC and finally, 4. damaged the operating system if anyone tried to remove it. Sony's considered response to the outrage provoked by this news was first to deny there was a problem, then to demand lots of personal information before giving you a software fix that 1. secretly installed software on your computer that secretly sent Sony information about the songs you listened to and 2. created another, larger security hole in your PC.

No wonder I couldn't keep the story straight. It's pure Hollywood. And while it may be Sony's biggest screwup, it's not the company only screwup. "Sony's general incompetence when it comes to digital music boggles the mind," notes David Pogue. "First there was its 'iPod killer' music players, which were initially released without the ability to play a little file format called MP3. Then there was its disastrous Connect music store, whose design was so wasteful of screen space it was almost unuseable. And now the astonishing move to copy-protect all of its music CD's--ironically, in some cases, over the strident objections of the actual bands--with software that behaves like spyware."

As David points out, angry consumers aired their complaints in public forums like Amazon reviews, where they vowed not to buy affected CDs. Information Week went to town with this headline: Bloggers Break Sony. "There's a whole new set of rules that people have to live by," Factiva CMO Alan Scott told Information Week (Factiva just happens to make text-mining software to help execs track the gossip about their companies). "Whether it's blogs or user groups or NGOs, it's all about honesty and authenticity. This is just the latest painful example of a major company finding that the old tools and the old actions don't work."

Those old tools and old actions, also known as lies and lying, do work often enough. Just not this time. And as much as we'd all like to see these go away, I'm confident that in certain circles dissembling will always be in style. Even now I bet there's a bunch of executives nationwide using Sony's situation as a case study in crisis PR when it should be a case study in ethics. Sony's actions were wrong before they became public knowledge and they're wrong now. Too bad the company hasn't figured that out.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:44 PM | Comments (2)

November 17, 2005

The Real Story Behind Sony's Rogue Rootkit

Bruce Schneier delivers the goods in a terrific Wired News article that ticks through several entertaining aspects of Sony's use of a secret software tool, a rootkit, to protect its CDs and its bungled attempt to help people remove it. There are so many twists that it's hard to see the big picture. Sony's hubris, he notes, is plenty large.

"Sony BMG's president of global digital business demonstrated the company's disdain for its customers when he said, 'Most people don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?' in an NPR interview."

That attitude, while breathtaking in its miscalculation, is not the real story, according to Schneier.

"The story to pay attention to here is the collusion between big media companies who try to control what we do on our computers and computer-security companies who are supposed to be protecting us," Schneier writes. "What do you think of your antivirus company, the one that didn't notice Sony's rootkit as it infected half a million computers? ... This is exactly the kind of thing we're paying those companies to detect -- especially because the rootkit was phoning home.

"But much worse than not detecting it before Russinovich's discovery was the deafening silence that followed. When a new piece of malware is found, security companies fall over themselves to clean our computers and inoculate our networks. Not in this case."

Read Schneier report's for names, dates and details. Schneier, a security wiz and cofounder of a corporate IT security firm, is asking questions that need to be answered. "What happens when the creators of malware collude with the very companies we hire to protect us from that malware? ... Who are the security companies really working for? What will they do the next time some multinational company decides that owning your computers is a good idea?"

My guess? Roll over and play dead for as long as they can. Just as many of them did this time around.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Gay Scat, Nylons & Sony: The Evil of Stealth Software

As you probably know, Sony is busy backpeddling from a boneheaded decision to use a secret form of digital rights management software on its CDs. As the London Free Press explains, "This anti-copying software would automatically install on a user's computer when the music CD was inserted in a computer disk drive. ...The application was designed to install at a 'root' or system level and be disguised so it could not be found by normal means. Also, the computer user would need to read the entire user agreement and understand the wording in order to have any awareness of the application and how it would operate.

"Second, the media player Sony used with the CDs would send the Internet protocol address of the user's computer and their listening habits back to Sony -- without notice to the user. As if that wasn't enough to create a public relations problem, the application could be co-opted by a hacker. Designed to hide a legitimate objective (preventing unauthorized copying) it could also be used to hide other objects, including malicious code taking advantage of the Sony technology. It did not take long for an exploit to appear."

Insert Scream-like expressions of horrified PR execs here.

What's interesting about Sony's stupid move (aside from reminding us of the age-old truism that companies are perfectly happy to mislead their customers when it suits them) is how much it mirrors the common, sleazy tactics of so many Internet bottom feeders. My PC was hijacked recently thanks to an unknown person in Odessa and Integrated Search Technologies, which appears to specialize in software that both forces itself upon consumers and downloads third-party software PC users haven't requested.

The hijack happened because I wondered why this blog (and others) got a slew of trackback spam that promoted mainstream branded products (including autos from Ford and Toyota and phones made by Nokia) along with the usual collection of links to gay scat (who knows?), casino and big boob sites. So I followed a trackback link to a faux Nokia 7280 review at mobile-nokia.info/ nokia-7280-high-fashion-lipstick-phone while recklessly using IE (Foxfire is my usual choice).

Quicker than you can say foolhardy, a security warning appearing on my screen and asked if I wanted to install and run something from Integrated Search Technologies (IST). The answer was no no, a thousand times no but the evil scum who engineered this particular piece of marketing madness didn't care what I wanted. The first gray box was replaced with another: "Click YES to have access now."

The bottom of the IE window said it was “installing components…ysb_regular.cab” so I shut down the PC. When I restarted, a file called download.xxx was sitting on the desktop. After I deleted the program, I used Firefox (under my settings, it should *not* allow a web site to download or install software without my permission, although I did allow Javascript, to go back to the site and saw this:“Applet Installer Applet started." In a panic, I unplugged the PC. Later I turned off Javascript in Firefox and went back to the site. No problemo.

The WHOIS registry lists an Odessa address as the registrant behind the faux Nokia wonderland that hijacked my PC but he or she is not the power behind the sneaky software. According to DOXdesk, that dubious honor belongs to IST, which provides ysb_regular.cab or the ISTbar, “an IE toolbar, homepage- and search-hijacker."

DOXdesk is wildly helpful in explaining how it works: “Installed by ActiveX drive-by download on affiliate sites; typically porn in the case of XXXToolbar, from April 2003. An ‘aggressive’ downloader is usually used: if you refuse the download, a JavaScript alert complains that it won’t take no for an answer and opens the download window again.” In my case it didn't open the download window again, it simply downloaded the program despite my frantic attempts to stop it.

According to DOXdesk, all versions of this corrupt bit of coding "also install other third-party software which includes advertising." This is not the worst part, though. The worst part is this: the software “can download and execute arbitrary unsigned code from its controlling server. This is used both to update the software and to install third-party software.”

IST describes itself as "a leading Internet marketing solutions provider, specializing in effectively targeting valuable customers at the moment they are most interested in a particular product or service. IST targets the customers through several different delivery methods such as highly effective toolbars and plugins available for Internet Explorer." Plenty of folks would disagree with that description, including those who've filed a complaint with the FTC against the company.

Until recently, I would never have compared companies like IST and Sony but now I do. Smooth move, Sony. You gotta wonder why this behavior is legal for Sony, for Integrated Search Technologies or for any other company or individual. Regulators, are you listening?

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2005

Journalism 2.0: It's Not the Meat, It's the Motion

A while back I linked to Nicholas Carr, who had some interesting things to say about the rise of Web 2.0. For a guy who appreciates diversity of opinion, Jeff Jarvis seemed quick to dismiss Carr as an elitist curmudgeon after "linkjuice." Plenty of other smart folks have hammered him as well. Carr may be wrong about some things but he's not wrong about the near-religious cult inspired by the Internet and all the delicious, gleaming possibilities that seem to hover just beyond our grasp. Jarvis dismisses that point, perhaps because he hasn't spent as many years as I have interviewing tech execs peddling products that are Going To Change The World For The Better Forever and that, ideally, we're supposed to drop to our knees and worship on the spot.

But no matter--bloggers will blog, vloggers will vlogg and professional media companies will continue to morph if they must. So fuck the amateur vs. professional debate. Fuck the Web 2.0 debate. I want to see a debate about public service and the practice of journalism. What does it mean? What should it mean? Is do-gooder journalism even possible?

Here's the media revolution so far: Individuals, such as myself, get to play pundit from the comfort of our homes, while companies have tumbled to the wisdom of hiring bloggers to promote their brands. That the blogosphere is safe for both gasbag cranks and corporate communications isn't my idea of massive progress. Yes, I'm being cranky. There's tons of great stuff as well. But where's the public service journalism? The press has a duty to keep the public informed in large matters and small. Community listings are a public service, to be sure. But where are the muckrakers? There are a few, very few, practitioners and you gotta wonder if ambitious public service journalism has a future in the United States in any medium. Lord knows it hasn't made much of a splash in the recent past. That's no surprise. There's always been a conflict between profit-driven journalism and public service, and there always will be. As well as disagreement about what constitutes public service.

Here's what I mean by public service: life-saving or life-enhancing journalism on behalf of the public good. Journalism that triggers meaningful change (hectoring Dan Rather or Trent Lott, however satisfying, doesn't qualify). Journalism has never been an especially effective means for improving life for citizens (particularly the less-powerful ones), and it seems even less effective now than it once was.

My first journalism job was as a fact-checker for Mother Jones, which was a bastion of investigative journalism. I was young enough to believe that simply working there constituted a kind of public service. I was wrong. Writing about injustice is not the same as righting injustice. Even if conventional media organizations cared about making the world better, odds are they couldn't. Tell me I'm wrong about this. Show me how journalism--not all of it, just some of it--is actually attacking corruption, eradicating pollution or maybe just making life a little easier for the elderly neighbors next door. Seriously. I'm begging you.

A smart and happy crew of true believers is busy building a better Web. Will we build a better journalism? Dan Gillmor and others are working on it and good luck to them. I hope so-called citizen journalism doesn't stop at online bulletin boards. And that journalism 2.0, once it jells, will be a genuine cause for celebration rather than business as usual in a slightly flashier suit.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:41 PM | Comments (1)

October 25, 2005

The Kinky Appeal of Avian Flu

The Avian Flu is coming. Are you scared yet? You should be. Various newspapers and helpful outlets like The History Channel are doing their best to scare the bejeesus out of us. But why would we allow ourselves to be scared? Physician Abigail Zuger shares her experience in a terrific essay in today's New York Times. Some of her patients prefer to worry about unlikely health threats rather than actual health threats. (Don't miss the emphysema sufferer who prefers worrying about avian flu to quitting cigarettes.) Once again, denial trumps reality. And why not? Reality is a bitch.

"Of four patients I saw in a single hour last week, three announced how scared they were of the avian flu. I reassured them, but there was quite a bit I did not say, and here it is.

"I did not say: If you want to be scared, then how about that drug habit of yours you think I don't know about? How about the fact that you are 100 pounds overweight and eat nothing but junk? How about the fact that in a few short months Medicaid is going to stop paying for your very expensive medications and no one knows how just high that Medicare Part D deductible and co-payment are going to be? I did not say: If you want something to be scared of, how about the drug-resistant Klebsiella that is all over this very hospital, an ordinary run-of-the-mill bacterial strain that has become so resistant to so many antibiotics that we've had to resurrect a few we stopped using 30 years ago because they were so toxic.

"That Klebsiella is one scary germ. It's in hospitals all over the country, and by now it's probably killed a thousandfold more people than the avian flu.

"But you don't hear much about our Klebsiella. Like our bad habits and our dismally insoluble health insurance tangles, our antibiotic-resistant bacteria are with us, right here, right now."

Speaking of dismally insoluble health insurance tangles, it's nice to see Wal-Mart's charm offensive include more affordable health insurance for its employees. Although that won't solve all their problems. If they get seriously ill the first year, they're screwed thanks to a $25K cap on benefits. And if Barbara McNees has her way, the naughty ones won't get coverage because they won't deserve it. McNees is president and CEO of the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce and as a representative of small businesses, she's understandably concerned about the employer cost of health insurance.

"We must deal with the 600-pound gorilla sitting in the national living room -- health care spending that is approaching one-sixth of U.S. gross domestic product. This will require nothing less than wrenching changes in health care delivery, health care financing (e.g., no payments for preventable patient injuries such as hospital-acquired infections) and individual accountability for behavioral choices."

Individual accountability for behavioral choices: Does that mean smokers would no longer be entitled to health insurance? That only wealthy people would be able to afford character defects, at least when it came to medical treatment? Isn't getting lung cancer, say, accountability enough? Do we have to thumb our noses at people who may have made some poor choices and deny them insurance coverage as well? That is one scary concept. Scarier, even, than avian flu. McNees may spring from upstanding, Puritan stock that never exhibited human weakness or fraility in any way. Most Americans can't make that claim. We're flawed; so are the people we love. But not as flawed as McNees' idea or a health system that leaves millions without coverage.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:02 PM | Comments (1)

October 20, 2005

I Do Not Hate Microsoft: WSJ Edition

In response to John Dvorak's claim that tech journalists are besotted with Apple because they use Macs rather than PCs, WSJ Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg has this response:

"I can't speak for other writers and reviewers, but I use both platforms daily. And which machine I use has nothing to do with my reviews. I have praised Apple products in reviews written on Windows PCs, and praised Microsoft stuff in reviews written on Macs. The argument is just ludicrous.

"The truth is that Apple is the most innovative computer company, and the only one that largely aims at consumers and very small businesses. All the others are mainly focused on big corporate customers, as is Microsoft. There's nothing wrong with that, but I am focused on consumers, and the consumer space is also where change -- and thus news -- happens fastest.

"I have no problem with Microsoft's p.r. people -- they are smart and professional and I work well with them. But Apple has been on a roll for five years or more, with great products. As I have said publicly, if the products go south, I'll turn on them in a New York minute."

Walt left his response in the comments section of yesterday's posting (thanks!), and I hope other journalists drop by to respond.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:13 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2005

Do Mac-Lovin' Hacks Hate Microsoft or Love Apple Too Much?

PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak claims that tech journalists love Apple because they're so starry-eyed over the Macs they use. The upshot, he claims, is reporting that's biased against Microsoft.

"As big and as important as Microsoft is, the coverage of the company is quite mediocre. This is particularly true in the mainstream press. The reason for this is that today's newspaper and magazine tech writers know little about computers and are all Mac users. It's a fact. ... The newsroom editors are generally so out of touch that they can't see this bias. Besides, they use Macs too. There are entire newsrooms, such as the one at Forbes, that consist entirely of Macintoshes. Apparently nobody but me finds this weird.

"Even Jack Shafer, who recently wrote about Apple's skewed coverage in Slate fails to point out the connection between the skewed coverage and the existence of this peculiar conflict of interest based on the national writers' use of Macs. I often confront these guys with this assertion, and they, to a man (I've never confronted a female reporter about this), all say that they use a Mac 'because it is better.' Right. And that attitude doesn't affect coverage now, does it?"

It's an interesting question. If you're covering Microsoft and you use a Mac exclusively, I can see how that might be a problem. But John's not talking about wet-behind-the-ears newbies. Read the whole column and it's obvious he's including tech veterans like Steven Levy, John Markoff, Walt Mossberg, Katie Hafner and a bunch of other folks who've been around the block a few times. He doesn't name them but they certainly appear to be among his targets (and I hope he'll correct me if I'm wrong).

Jack Slater doesn't name anyone either but all this pro-Apple propaganda is coming from somewhere. If you agree with Dvorak and Slater, send me examples. Let's see if there's anything to this use-a-Mac, slobber-over-Jobs theory of journalism. My bias is that I know Levy, Markoff and Hafner and, because they are friends, can't be trusted to write objectively about the issue. But I can write fairly and accurately about it. But can Dvorak or Slater? What kind of computers do they use? If they use PCs, doesn't that bias them against Apple?

I think reporters slobber over Apple because (as Shafer points out), Apple is much better at spinning compelling narratives than Microsoft and much better at dealing with the press overall. (Nobody working for Apple ever called me to complain because I failed to include an Apple product in a round-up of dubious products that I trashed in print. Believe it or not, someone from Microsoft did.) The fact that various publications praise Apple products that, soon after, fail on the marketplace doesn't necessarily mean that reporters are biased. They could simply be wrong. Reporters, like other folks, are wrong at times. Especially when it involves crystal balls. For a while there was practically a death watch over the company because it was doing so poorly. In those days the press got slammed for bias against Apple.

John may be right but his argument seems a little silly to me. Do you have to drive a Ford to report fairly on Ford Motor Co. or wear Levi-brand jeans to cover Levi-Strauss? What about the gender and race issues? Male reporters can be trusted to cover abortion but give 'em a Mac and they lose all sense of proportion? Maybe, but I'm not convinced. What about you? Details, I want details.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:18 PM | Comments (2)

Writing for Dollars: Police Blotter Edition

A pair of British financial journalists is accused of using a daily stock column to inflate the value of their personal portfolios, according to the London Times, which is covering the court case. The men deny the charges against them.

James Hipwell and Anil Bhoyrul, who wrote the Daily Mirror’s City Slickers section, displayed a 'cynical disregard' for their readers and the law by fabricating stories to enhance the value of their holdings, it was claimed. Using a "buy, tip and sale" approach, they would first spend thousands of pounds on shares, highlight the stock as "tip of the day" 24 hours later, and sell it at a profit as soon as the price rose, London’s Southwark Crown Court was told.

The prosecutor claims that "some of the stories behind the tips 'were in fact untrue, inaccurate or otherwise factually misleading', including a story about the alleged development of an Aids vaccine." And while we know there's no justice in the world, I'm pleased to share this additional tidbit: "...the journalists did not always make a profit. In fact the Aids vaccine tip actually saw the share price drop." Which is a small punishment to be sure, but nothing like the pain of spending eternity in hell, which is what these guys should get if they are guilty as charged.

In other corruption news, the Skandia redecorating scandal lives on, South Korea wins the Ms. Congeniality Award and friend and fellow scribe Glenn Fleishman, who is anything but corrupt, recently declined to comment publicly on a tech deal because of a conflict of interest. Nice to see somebody's showing a little restraint. Hey Glenn, got any stock tips?

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2005

Web 2.0: The Triumph of Amateur Hour?

I have never, ever understood the cult of professionalism adhered to by some journalists (bloggers have no journalism degrees, bloggers bad amateurs, bloggers threaten professionals, so must be crushed). Nor have I been on the bandwagon to eviserate those bastard pros that some "citizen journalists" have been riding for years. This either/or bullshit drives me nuts. It doesn't have to be a contest. But it is, and Nicholas Carr articulates in lucid, deadly prose both the problem with Wikipedia worship (he cites examples) and why, despite its flaws, the Cult of the Amateur will probably triumph.

The promoters of Web 2.0 venerate the amateur and distrust the professional. We see it in their unalloyed praise of Wikipedia. ... Perhaps nowhere, though, is their love of amateurism so apparent as in their promotion of blogging as an alternative to what they call "the mainstream media." Here's O'Reilly: "While mainstream media may see individual blogs as competitors, what is really unnerving is that the competition is with the blogosphere as a whole. This is not just a competition between sites, but a competition between business models. The world of Web 2.0 is also the world of what Dan Gillmor calls 'we, the media,' a world in which 'the former audience,' not a few people in a back room, decides what's important."

But wait, there's more:

I'm all for blogs and blogging. (I'm writing this, ain't I?) But I'm not blind to the limitations and the flaws of the blogosphere - its superficiality, its emphasis on opinion over reporting, its echolalia, its tendency to reinforce rather than challenge ideological extremism and segregation. Now, all the same criticisms can (and should) be hurled at segments of the mainstream media. And yet, at its best, the mainstream media is able to do things that are different from - and, yes, more important than - what bloggers can do. ... The Internet is changing the economics of creative work - or, to put it more broadly, the economics of culture - and it's doing it in a way that may well restrict rather than expand our choices. Wikipedia might be a pale shadow of the Britannica, but because it's created by amateurs rather than professionals, it's free. And free trumps quality all the time.

Thanks to Dave Kearns for the link. More on the amateur-pro grudge match later.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:54 PM | Comments (1)

October 12, 2005

Biz Author Faces Critic

Earlier this week Vision Thing's Ethan Johnson posted a podcast with Laurence Haughton, who authored It's Not What You Say...It's What You Do. It's rare that critics face the authors they've slammed online or elsewhere. But Laurence, who must be a Cluetrain fan, didn't take the dressing down lying down. He invited Ethan (and me, because I linked to the review, which was hilarious if deadly) to have a conversation about his book. Ethan accepted the invitation literally.

The podcast meanders a bit initially, then the author gradually takes over center stage for a long and detailed explanation of, and plug for, his book. He isn't defensive about the original review. Ethan doesn't attack like an ego-driven media pitbull but asks questions like the business manager he is. The result, for me at least, is a fairly engaging back and forth. Nobody capitulates, both guys are respectful and the conversation is a useful introduction to the topic. As well as whip-smart book marketing.

Why isn't professional broadcasting like this more often? Hmm, could be there's a future for this podcasting stuff after all. Wink wink. Nudge nudge.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2005

Did H&M Bribe Reporters?

Eventually Sweden will be just as crass, commercial and consumerist as my beloved U.S.A. In the meantime, there are still a few pockets of resistance and a few quaint cultural differences. Swedish contestants in the multiple rounds of qualifiers for the Eurovision Song contest, for example, tend to wear the same expensive, sparkily outfit at every single event. Apparently they're not required, as American contestants would be by peer pressure if nothing else, to bankrupt themselves with a new costume for each appearance. That's so sane, so Swedish--you gotta love it!

One cherished national ideal is that Swedes are honest. And mostly they are. But not always, so newspapers report on the apparent exceptions (think bribery and corruption) with enthusiasm and zeal. That's as it should be. The hubbub over a recent press junket is intriguing. On October 6, Karin Olsson reported in Resume (a trade pub that covers Swedish media, marketing and PR) that homegrown clothing retailer H&M was being investigated for bribery because it paid for leading fashion journalists to view its fashion show in New York last April. H&M picked up the costs of this "luxury trip," as Resume calls it, which included a two-night stay in a supposedly swanky hotel, the flight and one dinner, which were worth about $2000 (15 000 SEK) per person. (A junket is utterly against the rules at many U.S. publications, including the Washington Post and the New York Times. Others appreciate the help and don't bat an eyelash.)

According to Olsson (here's an English summary from a different pub), disapproving colleagues blew the whistle by contacting the head of some official corruption office. About 200 journalists from several countries flew in for the event. H&M declined to tell Resume how many of that total (including 15 Swedes) had their trips sponsored. Here's my English version of the Resume-H&M exchange:

H&M "We think it's completely wrong to talk about bribery. We made no demands. It's not in the interests of H&M to expose journalists to anything that can be considered pressure," says press spokesperson Annacarin Björne.

Resume But didn't you pay for the publications so they would write about the clothes?

H&M This is about giving all journalists an opportunity to travel given that so many publications have small budgets.

Resume Do you mean you only invited editorial staffs that were poor?

H&M It's up to every editorial staff to decide whether to take the trip. But we don't want to discuss this further given that there will be a preliminary investigation.

Olsson helpfully contacted the police officer investigating the case to see if a staffer at H&M or any of the jet-setting fashion scribes had reported a suspected crime. You know the answer: Nope. As Björne told Resume, junkets like this are "normal in this industry." And not only fashion. Press junkets are common in the travel and entertainment industries. Online scribes are also wooed now that Blogville is a regular stop on the buzz-building circuit. Tech journalists are often invited on free trips and radio pundits get free trips as well. (Earlier this year the Department of Defense chased airtime by underwriting a trip to Iraq, an especially savvy move now that opinionated blather is regularly mistaken for actual news reporting.) It's not just media types on this gravy train. Policiticians are intimately familiar with the pursuasive power of junkets, they've been taking them for years. Bureaucrats and judges, too.

Hmm, maybe Olsson and Resume were right to get their knickers in a knot. Is the entire U.S. power structure getting handouts, or does it just seem that way?

One of the Swedish fashion editors (she either went on the trip or sent someone else) said the freebie wasn't an issue because her publication wasn't going to write any more about H&M now than it did before the trip. She was saying that there is no actual conflict of interest if the publication's coverage isn't affected. Was H&M wrong to host the junket? Were journalists wrong to accept? Or is the problem not that reporters took a free trip but that readers won't know about it?

People have attempted to buy the attention of reporters about as long as there have been reporters. But rarely do they attempt to buy actual column inches. Publicity hounds are usually so besotted with the fabulousness of themselves, their company or their product that they're convinced that press coverage is inevitable. If they can get a reporter to sit down, shut up and listen to their pitch (or watch their demo or view their fashion show), they think a cover story is bound to follow. Often this conceit, while charming, is dead wrong.

(I'm never surprised when someone wants to buy my attention, only that they believe it's a cheap purchase. At Macworld we used to sling all the freebie T-shirts into a box. When the box was full, we'd take it downtown and give the shirts to homeless people, people who really needed them. In fact, we didn't want toys or meals or t-shirts, we wanted interesting, reliable info. That is, stories of interest to our readers. This is not news to any PR pro but it is a remarkably tough concept for some execs to grasp.)

Now I'm no paragon of virtue, and I'm not convinced there's an easy answer to every ethical question, inside journalism or out of it. Is it enough to disclosure real and potential conflicts of interest to your editor? Your readers? The planet? Should journalists disclose their conflicts more publicly than judges or senators and, if so, why? (Last time I checked, hacks weren't empowered to haul people into jail or enact legislation. Don't tell me we have a greater public trust than folks with true power.) And why do ideas about press disclosure seem to apply to writers and reporters but not to the editors who assign, shape, edit (often drastically) and approve the final published or broadcast story? It's a mystery to me.

What's your take? Anybody try to "bribe" you recently?

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:49 AM | Comments (2)

October 08, 2005

Calacanis, AOL and 25 Million Smackers

Blogville's a twitter over Jason Calacanis' recent sale of Weblogs Inc. to AOL for an estimated $25 million. In an unrelated but still lucrative deal, Dave Winer sold Weblogs.com to Verisign for $2.3 million. (Scroll down.) Congrats, Dave.

Here in Stockholm, it's a quiet autumn Saturday with birdsong in the air, crunchy leaves underfoot and virtually no pulse-revving blog or RSS announcements in the offing. As a public service I'll tear myself away from the lovely surroundings to provide a few snippets of punditry related to this greatly hyped purchase.

From rival Nick Denton:
"The acquisition of WIN by AOL is exhilirating news, in many respects, most of which I shouldn't list here. For what it's worth, Gawker isn't for sale. The whole point about blogs is that they're not part of big media. Consolidation defeats the purpose. It's way too early. Like a decade too early."

From potty mouth Mike Butcher:
"Big media is going to get into blogs, there's no doubt. Look at Murdoch and MySpace. The mistake they will make is forcing their staff to start linking to internal brands, pissing in the pool and potentially turning readers off." I hate when that happens, don't you? "AOL executives normally produce more than $25m just going to the toilet. The bubble isn't over. However, I think it won't go much farther. If you actually look at some of the blogs on Weblogs Inc, they are just ghost towns - filled with 'Here's the best of the WEN network' posts. AOL must know this, surely?"

Calacanis himself on what's next:
"AOL loves the fact that I’m 'out there' blogging and debating the issues in our industry." Sure it does--to a point. "However, let me be clear and say I’m not becoming the Robert Scoble of AOL (at least not at this point). I’m not going to be talking about things outside of Weblogs, Inc. all that much because, frankly, I’m not involved in them! I can’t tell you what’s going on with Netscape, Moviephone, AIM, etc. I can forward you to an AOL PR executive who will be glad to speak with you...."

Thanks but no thanks, Jason. I think we can find one on our own.

From Dana Blankenhorn on Corante:
"AOL is said to be giving Calacanis autonomy, plus a five year contract, the question occurs how much autonomy will he get, and what kind of budget? After Blogger was bought by Google similar promises were made, but Blogger has yet to fulfill its technical or financial potential, and Six Apart (which remains independent) still hosts more blogs than any other platform. ... If this business is so good why is it worth so little?"

Because it's not that good, at least not yet. But we may get there. As Forbes explains:
"The next Steven Spielberg could be your neighbor down the street. The next Madonna could be in the cube across the aisle." And I could be the next Mike Tyson and pop the writer in a hurry if this story doesn't get to the point soon. "...Media conglomerates are now betting they can get compelling content on the cheap, either by enlisting the ranks of nonprofessionals or by asking customers themselves to make their own media."

Why not? The reality-TV craze has put professional actors out of work. As an industry executive told the Washington Post last year, "Reality works because it is relatively cheap to make.... Prime-time reality is a nice little business -- if it is nonunion." The pay for top media execs is pretty sweet (scroll down), while the rates for freelance writers, at least, have declined 50 percent since the 1960s. That's pretty damn cheap. But maybe not cheap enough for the corporate crowd. We'll see.

Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2005

New Gal in Blogville

Author Michele Cozzens, whom I