London Underground drivers speaking their minds

Hilarious

http://solo2.abac.com/themole/#heroes

Memory

"The primary principle of Ingsoc is the mutability of the past"

I'm reading 1984 at the moment and last night re-watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. They are two fantastic explorations of memory.

Orwell presents a vision of a future where the past is constantly changed. Winston spends his days rewriting old articles to suit the constant political changes. Oceania is war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia, then instantly it swops: Eastasia is an ally, Eurasia an enemy; and everyone switches instantly. When Winston is captured by the thought-police, O'Brien tortures him by burning a newspaper article - a piece of documentary evidence - that is tangible proof of how the party has shifted reality. "I remember it" he protests. "I don't" replies his tormentor.

Charlie Kaufman & Michel Gondry's film is just fantastic. Lacuna is a company that can erase your memory so you can forget about a painful breakup. But Joel finds his very personality disappearing at the same time.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

Death of A President

Powerful idea. Great narrative. That's what makes a film great. Great way to use the documentary format too.

Documentary / journalism / drama - it's all about stories.

Imparitality

I'm doing work experience at the BBC at the moment, and one of the internal training videos has a great little explainer on the principle of impartiality. It's done by Evan Davies.

He says that impartiality is a style of broadcasting, but not the only "right" style. Newspapers, which posit their position in a partisan one-sided manner - as "viewspapers" as it were - are not only a valid part of our democracy but a vital part of a democracy.

However impartiality IS the right style for the BBC. He uses the metaphor of a courtroom. The BBC's role is to ensure that the jury has the facts and arguments with which to make up its own mind. It invites members on the various sides of an argument to posit their views, whilst doing its best to ensure the facts being banded around are correct.

This, in my view, is a clear public good - something valuable to our democracy which the free market would be hard pressed to deliver at the quality our democracy deserves. This is why BBC News should always be publicly-funded, and generously so.

However, I'm not sure why the rest of the BBC has to be thus. Why not fund BBC News with a grant from the government? Like the World Service?

But then would this make it too vulnerable to government pressure? It's an interesting question to explore.

Arguing in the pub

I recently finished work on a Channel 4 dispatches film. I was working as a runner and researcher. The director of the film made this point about film-making. 

"It's like you at the pub arguing with your friends," he said. "Everyone's arguing and carrying on, and nobody's listening. Then you get to press PAUSE. You go away for several weeks, collect all the best arguments and evidence together, and then come back and everyone sits down and pays attention to you for an hour."

It really is an awesome privilege.

What's so bad about designer babies?

The idea of "designer babies" is abhorrent. But why? Follow this thought experiment:

Premise 1: A high IQ is an advantage in life. Having a pleasant (rather than an ugly) countenance works to a person's advantage.

Premise 2: A high IQ is something you're born with.

Premise 3: We have a strong moral tradition of natural equality - all men are created equal. The divine right of kings, aristocracy, racism, sexism ... these all arguments based on the idea of natural privilege.

Therefore: what's wrong with designer babies? Why can't we abolish the last natural privilege, and make all our kids brainy?

But isn't playing God?

Yes. So what? Humans play God all the time. Eating animals, planting trees, building cities... humans have been affecting their environment.

We also do our best to affect our kids once they're born with education and so on. What's so different about doing it before they are born?

But we've never done that before...

The argument is education and so on are "natural", but using genetics to affects babies is "unnatural".

What's so different? Better technology? We never flew before we invented the aeroplane. If it's "unnatural" to fly, should we burn all our aeroplanes?

IQ doesn't determine success / high IQ isn't something you're born with / we don't know what genes affect IQ...

I'm exploring the idea of genetics and natural equality, I'm less interested in it practically. I could make the same argument for beauty or height. Why can't we design our babies?

But everyone would look the same

I'm not sure that's true. You can make a building a thousand ways and people do. Everyone listens to different music.

I Don't Know

Politics is hooked on certainty.

A policy has to be sold as the answer.

When will we have a politician who can say: "Well I think this is a good policy, I'm going to give it a try and hope it will work, but ultimately I don't know."?

What's more, policies take years to have any effect, and often changes are resisted by bureaucracies.

Most fundamentally, policies are often only one input on any given problem.

Take the education of children. We tend to talk about government as if it is the sole cause of good or poor education. We talk about "failing schools".

This is nonsense. What about, I don't know, parents, the aptitude of the child, the culture the child grows up in, and so on?

Ministers sit in Whitehall and pull levers hoping the machine will produce different outcomes.

We harangue them when nothing changes.

But if government can do only a little, when will we start to see it as our problem? We complain about education but we don't sign up as volunteers to listen to children read.

We have the politics we deserve.

Video Games Encourage Violence

... but so what?

Here's another argument to consider:

Violence in video games normalises it. The more you pretend to shoot someone with a gun, the less unnatural it is. Practice makes actions easier. Video games encourage violence.

And so do films. And plays. And so do many other forms of art.

Encouraging something does not make you responsible for it. Yet, our law argues the opposite. If you "incite" violence, you are responsible along with the person who actually is violent. Why should this be so?

It has become common to talk about America being responsible for all the deaths in Iraq. Americans are responsible for the bombs they drop. But why are they responsible for those who die in a suicide bombing?

So even if video games do encourage violence, that is no reason to ban them.

What do you think?

War on Drugs

Is the the war on drugs more harmful than the drugs themselves?

Here's the argument:

Legalize drugs. Prohibition is illiberal and ineffective. The current drugs war is a disaster for everyone involved, except the criminal gangs. When police manage to cut down on supply, the price goes up and the profits made by criminal gangs just increase. Sell drugs in government lisenced stores, give the 3rd world producers a better deal, starve off the criminals and make some money for the public coffers. Treat addiction as illness.

What do you think?

Borders

The idea of borders is morally obscene.

Here's an argument to try on for size:

My British nationality and the rights that grants me are a form of inherited privilege. I gain those rights at birth. And yet, central to most cherished notions of justice, is equality - the idea that all are born equal. It is at the heart of our ideas of rights, and has been the main enemy of numerous evils: racism, caste-systems, slavery, ethnic conflict, sexism, as well as ideas of a "ruling class". As they declared in 1776: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal".

Not all inequality is unfair. People make different choices and may have more or fewer privileges as a result. But still we cling to the idea that men are born equal. Nationality is the ideology that supports the infrastructure of the state-system, a system which treats people unequally on the basis of their birth.

Will we not one day look back on the passport as a symbol of profound injustice?

But what does a world without borders look like? Could we have imagined the EU as a place without borders a hundred years ago?

Or does international law and human rights redeem the state-system? Can it allow the nation-state system to become only expressions of collective identity and liberty? Like different families in a community, or different businesses in a market. Free to try different policies and systems.

Can you imagine a world where migration conferred privilege to a nation. As a business grows in the market place as customers prefer its goods or services, what if a nation's borders expanded as people wished to join? Mexico wishes to join the United States. And as temperatures rise, the United States wishes to join Canada.

Short little film

A short little film shot on my mobile phone (Nokia N95 8GB). Valentines Park, January 2009.

No excuses for targeting civilians

The excuse Israel gives for targeting the UN school is that Hamas was firing rockets from there.

Hamas are using civilian shields, and then when they are hit by the Israelis, they remove the soldiers' bodies and invite in the TV cameras.

In other words, the Palestinian civilians get screwed by both sides.

Used as shields by Hamas, bombed by Israel.

While civilians get killed, do Hamas and Israel actually have anything to gain from a ceasefire? Is Hamas more or less popular now than before Christmas?

I think many in the UK see this conflict partly through the experience of Northern Ireland. The consensus view about that conflict is that 1) compromise is inevitable 2) it's all about hearts and minds. In other words, it's about "soft power" rather than guns and tanks.

For e.g. internment (chucking anyone who seemed vaguely terrorist-like in prison) might (controversially) have been a sucess in reducing violence, but it was the "recruiting seargeant" for the IRA, and so any short-term success was out-weighed by its long-term effects.

Israel doesn't see it like that.

It's an interesting debate - hard vs. soft power. Gandi and Martin Luther King are often used as examples of soft power. Yet they had the support of numbers. Does peace (i.e. two autonomous states) have popular support in the region?

It's not complicated

Commentators keep calling the Gaza crisis complex. It's not.

It's very difficult, yes. There are two sides strongly set against each other, with grievances on both sides.

Israel:
- rockets firing into Israel
- an government who won't recognise Israel as legitimate

Hamas:
- air and ground attacks on them, with large numbers of civilians being killed
- don't recognize Hamas as legitimate
- won't open the borders and let Gaza operate as a country
- stole the land of Israel after the second world war

People fall into the trap of trying to figure out who's in the right or not. Whose side am I on? they ask. Wrong question.

It's not that difficult to see what the solution is: Hamas to stop the rockets, Israel to stop the attacks. International monitors to keep the borders open and free of arms smuggling. Gaza allowed to develop, and its people allowed to get on with their lives and vote in whoever they like to power.

Question for anyone who knows: is there a naval blockade of Gaza? Why can't journalists just sail in? Can't we ship in relief supplies?

"I am in the rather unusual situation of living alongside hurting children, young people and families day by day, while at the same time being a part of the care system in helping to frame policies, administer Children’s Fund money, trying to help partnership between different professionals, and engaging the voluntary sector in partnership focussed on children. And I have found that for the most part I operate in two different worlds that have very little to do with each other.

There is an industry that produces reports, prepares for inspections, develops guidelines and organises training courses for practitioners, produces new strategies and forms of organisation and partnership, but I see very little evidence that it actually helps the lives of the sort of children, young people and families that Camila and I live among.

...

To hear professionals in the statutory and voluntary sector bleat about the poverty that blights the lives of children and families, while these same professionals draw sizeable salaries has always struck me as verging on the disingenuous or hypocritical."

Keith White

Akihabara rampage

So a guy goes on a rampage with a knife in Akihabara

Two things to note:

1. Chris Hogg, the BBC correspondent, doesn't speak Japanese and even mispronounced the name of the place: Akiharbara. (Reminds me of when Tim Gardam visited Japan, thanking everyone, arigarto gozaimas) No-one says Akiharbara. It's like saying New Yak instead of New York. STILL, snobbery aside - to look at, the reporting was sound. More to the point: better than what I still know how to do. I guess languages are a bonus, but knowing how to report a story is the most important thing.

2.
"A few hours later the area had been cleared. There were pools of water on the side of the road where the blood had been washed away....

In front of it bystanders were reading special single sheet editions of a newspaper which detailed what had happened, with photographs of the emergency services working at the scene."

Who wrote that newspaper? That's someone who's a real reporter. Isn't that something newspapers should be thinking about? Have a printer in a truck, reporters just put in what they know - rumours or otherwise, and sell to people at the scene...

All avenues exhausted...

Went to Bloomberg today. As you might know, I've been hunting down an internship there. Well no reply to my emails so I put on a suit and tie, and off I went. I talked my way past reception and went to find the lady in charge.

But it was no good. We had a very friendly conversation but the internships are for students, and I don't have any experience in a news-room. Oh well. I'll send her a thank you-card.

Anyway, the upshot is though, I'm coming home!

Probably get back even before my birthday on the 11th.

I wanted to go to North Korea, but it's looking expensive. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia are all on the wish-list too. Hmmm...

Truth is I'm kind of keen to get back. Big book shops, large sandwiches crammed full of filling, real bread, gravy... oh and friends and family.

The Cognitive Age

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

From David Brooks in the NY Times

No more boring letters

As you may know recently I've been hunting down work-experience and contacts in the media industry, trying to get advice and so on. I finally got sick of sending off dry cover letters and emailed this to Alan Vandermolen, Edelman's Asia-Pacific President:


I just read this:

“My god this place is just exploding … . we have so many great opportunities here and we are really only constrained by getting good people in … . jeez if I was in my late 20’s or early 30’s I’d be here in a shot”.

I came across it here (http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=496) on David Brains blog.
'Go to Asia!' he enthused.

Well I'm here.

But 'out east'? Does Japan count? Doesn't matter, I'm happy to go anywhere. Where would you go if you were me?

My name is Brendan Miller, and I came out here on a scholarship after University. (Modern History and Politics, Oxford) I learnt Japanese (Have level 2, and studying for level 1) and am now interning for an MP in the Japanese parliament (strongly qualified in answering the phone and taking out the rubbish).

Can I do an internship for you? Get a job? Advice?

Deleted this message yet? How about some advice on how to email people you don't know - ?

My current plan is to go into journalism but I've got an open mind. The world changes too quickly these days. Best to know what your passions are. These are mine. There's three.

• The buzz - News, ideas, history, people, design, art, politics, global, international, geography, biography, people's stories.
  
• The craft of communication, the skill to make a message sticky like duct-tape, news that engages the left and right side of the brain, emotions, curiosity, stories
  
• What did you build today? Creative, people, teams, partnerships, leadership, business. Building a system, not just hauling buckets.

Oh, and won't accept anything less than ten million a year.

How I'm doing?

Would love to hear from you,

Brendan


Got a reply back that day:

OK, Dude, you got me. Have a CV? Pls zap that and a phone number. In Tokyo now, but leaving later today. Will call you over the weekend or next week. Thanks for the interest.

Links 16-5-08

• How to do online video

http://www.naa.org/Resources/Articles/Digital-Media-Online-Video-BRoll-Making-Good-Video/Digital-Media-Online-Video-BRoll-Making-Good-Video.aspx

• "We will be able to see consumer reviews of restaurants on our PDA as we stand outside looking at the menu". Some interesting views on future trends...

http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=671

Links 15-5-08

• Everyone you know thinks the same as you

http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/04/25/homophily-serendipity-xenophilia/

Academia: a waste of space?

This lunchtime in the Japanese Diet's basement cafeteria, I had a debate about academia and its style. The issue was, why does academia insist on a particularly sober style (no personal story, photos, colour, information side-bars etc)? My friend was describing how her PhD supervisor would score out anything which seemed too "journalisty" - i.e. anything which didn't seem dry enough. Why is this?

I think academia is great. The aim of furthering knowledge for knowledge's sake is a noble and important one, and one which every society should make space for. What's more, despite newspapers always writing sensational pieces about research "into the bleeding obvious" (Academics speculate that exercise increases chances of sweat; "significant link" between being fat and being unhealthy), I support academics deciding what they should or should not investigate.

But what makes academia special is its funding. Where the money comes from, and who decides how it's spent. I don't see how "making it dry and boring" need be necessary qualifications for academic work.

There's a science of communication. One can pick out what makes one block of writing interesting and effective at communicating its message, and what makes another a waste of space. A recent book ("Made to Stick") by Chip and Dan Heath outline those elements which have been known to skilled rhetoricians (the original word for skilled communicator) since the Greeks: concrete details, emotion, a story, "curiosity gaps", simple (without being simplistic) etc.

Many academics write like computers, expecting to be read by computers. Their work should be structured and logical, but no personal details please. No human interest please. Photos? A new format? When academics don't write in a way that hooks the reader and the reader gets bored, drifts off and falls asleep in their seat, then instead of loading guilt on the reader (What a weak academic athlete you are!) surely the academic should consider making their work a little more (dare I say it?) journalisty - ?

This is, of course, delayed rage left over from University. Hours in the library, trudging through articles, falling asleep at the desk, waking up to find my face stuck to the pages. A weak academic athlete indeed.

When is it wrong to get rich?

"News isn’t the only way we encounter other countries - movies, television and music shape perceptions as well. But journalism has an explicit public service function, a social responsibility to inform citizens so they can make political decisions. Some of the blame for an isolated, ill-informed citizenry has to fall on the news media." Ethan Zuckerman

I've argued for a more "selling-centred media". In other words media should not forget it's a business, and that thinking more like a business might stop the hand-wringing about "how we are going to pay for the new media?" But if newspapers are a business, what about business ethics?

All businesses have a set of ethics. An ethical business is more than just a "legal" business. Its a set of practices to ensure that, even though a business has to make money by selling stuff (they are businesses after all) they do so in a way that makes those who participate proud and happy to be part of it (workers and customers).

Having an "explicit public service function" is great - if you're getting your money as a public service (i.e. from government). I think it's great when we as a society can make a space for independent organizations. (Being independent from the customer is more powerful than being independent from government.) But what about when fulfilling the function of a public service turns people off, bores them, makes them watch/read/browse something else? You can write "worthy" pieces all day long, but if no one reads them, what have you achieved?

Is there another way, rather than hectoring the public with "you should care more" moral posturing?

What do you think? Still puzzling away...

How will we pay for it? Baghdad EastEnders

The big question for newspapers buzzing around at the moment is, "Where will the money come from?".

Well I think I have the answer, but first I want to explain the bigger picture as I see it.

There's a big emotional attachment to the printed edition among a section of the public. But that section of the public is getting older. Only nineteen per cent of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four claim even to look at a daily newspaper. What's more, the average age of the American newspaper reader is fifty-five and rising.

With fewer readers, so goes the advertising. And the money.

Young people go on-line. And why not? It knocks the socks of other media. You can read good, old-fashioned copy (or maybe not old-fashioned - as I will explain below), but you also get to watch video footage like on TV - which is exciting and engaging (watch Jeremy Bowen getting shot at for example).

Plus you have the flexibility of a newspaper in choosing what you want to read/watch. It's why CDs knocked cassette-tapes out of the ring. You can access the bit you want straight away. You don't have to sit through three stories, which are very "worthy" but don't interest you, until you get to what you want to see.

We can also answer back now too. No more shouting at the TV, shout directly onto the message board. You might even get a response.

Then, on top of that, you can get as much or little detail as you want. Just Google / Wikipedia the topic and you can down as deep as you want to. Want to see another point of view? Good sites link to someone else who's saying something different. News story on Iraq? Now switch over and see of Al-Jazeera make of it. A side-bar in a newspaper is often a useful way of getting the context for a story. The bit that's new, the "news bit", (peace deal falters over question of Jerusalem) is confusing, boring and seems unimportant, without the "context-bit", something giving the bigger picture (What's the "question of Jerusalem"? Why do they care? Why do I care?). But with the web, no longer a grey, dry print out of the big dates of the Israeli-Palestine conflict; rather, animated maps, a well-written FAQ, a host of links to other sources, and a separate piece by the reporter, explaining face-to-camera the history.

But if the web's so great, what's the problem? Well after they tried charging for access for a while, newspapers switched to advertising. But it's been a disappointment. Advertising just doesn't pay the bills. Advertisers prefer to go on search engines - where they can advertise their camera just at the moment someone is thinking (and typing into Google) "Where can I buy a good camera?". On-line sections of newspapers are massively subsidised by print sales. So what to do...

Well first let me explain, that there's one more consequence of the way an internet based piece of news links to sources full of more detail, that hasn't been considered much yet. With a side bar full of links to encyclopedia articles, separate documentaries, and so on, there's something else that we can do. And it's to do with the possiblities this repository of more info on demand presents for changing the way articles are currently written.

The current journalist structure is an "inverted pyramid". In other words, the first sentence sums up the story, then the next paragraph goes a little further, and so on and so on: layers and layers of greater detail. Legend has it that this dates from the Civil War, when reporters were worried their wires would get cut off at any moment when delivering their story, and thus the need to put their most important information first.

The problem is that this takes all the curiosity out of it. You get the end at the beginning. The finale at the start. But that's not how other communications work. What Chip and Dan Heath call "curiosity gaps" is what advertisers, marketers and authors of page-turning thrillers all do naturally. Why not newspapers? Why can't the news be a "gripping read"?

Imagine a newspaper of the future. A big, broad-sheet sized slate, not shiny, but matt-finished and readable like paper - yet no worries about spilt orange juice. You sit at the table, munching away at your cereal, flicking your hands across its surface (see the CNN "magic wall") watching videos, and reading copy; but this time it's like you're reading a thriller. You're following the adventures of a reporter in the conflict-zone. You getting to know about the conflict. But maybe you know a little bit about the reporter too. Less a series of reports, more video-blog. It may be unprofessional for the reporter to talk about how scared they were, or how they fancied the cameraman from CNN, but hey, you never watched "professional news" anyway.

As the old-guard who feel it is their job to "protect" journalism from "dumbing-down", frivolity and becoming "soft" lose readers (and eventually their jobs), a new generation will emerge, who understand that information has to engage the right and left side of the brain. That involves a writing process that makes space for emotion, curiosity, and stories. It's what all good school teachers understand instinctively - trained from years of doing their journalism in front of a live studio audience.

But where does this leave us on the finance question? "Where's the money going to come from?!" I hear you scream. Don't worry, be patient. I'll get to that.

The "newspaper disease", as Roger Black calls it, is the result of an industry that has come to see itself as a kind of public-service, like doctors or the civil service. They have a duty to be there, like guardians-of-the-realm, there to protect us from devious governments and bad grammar.

But the truth is they are there because readers want to read what they produce. Of course, what a lot of readers want is accurate and objective information. They want protection from devious governments. However, the key verb there is want. Journalism may be good for our lives, but so are restaurants. Yet no restauranteur believes he deserves to survive, "or else the public will starve". To extend my little metaphor further, we can talk about brocolli. Why? Because "brocolli" has been the metaphor of choice among media-types for the news that is "good for us". In other words, fruit and veg is good for the health, but its dull and tasteless. Well, what I'm saying, is that fruit and veg is strawberries and peaches and plums too. News can be exciting and delicious.

An example? Here's one off the top of the head. How about conflict-zone soaps? Yes, a soap like Eastenders or Coronation Street. Explicitly fiction, using local actors, in English or with subtitles, it would reflect one family's life in a conflict zone - with all the plot twists, love-triangles and fights that make drama so captivating. But linked to the site, (it should be on the web of course, even if you choose to watch it from the sofa on a big iMac type thing), would be the life-stories and blogs of the actors themselves. And a documentary from the "hard-news" journalist explaining the context. And even flashy maps if you like. The point is, it would be interesting and engaging in a way hardly imagined by news editors these days. Today Students buy entire series of a programme on DVD and watch them back-to-back, solid over a 3 day period, with odd breaks for sleep and food. Do they do they do that with the output from your news organization?

Then we might start to see the break down of the artificial barriers that we've inserted into the human experience of learning about the world. No-one argues that the only place you can learn about the world is from non-fiction. Even if the topic (politics for e.g.) is usually the domain of news, do people learn nothing from fiction-treatments of the topic (West Wing, Yes Minister)? Of course they learn loads. It's not so much delivered as absorbed, but none the less important at that. It's like what Dr Kerry Weaver of ER walking around on her clutches did for understanding of adisability, or how the character of Mark Fowler in EastEnders educated people about HIV. And this is the start of the answer to where the money is going to come from.

If one learns about the news topics from all sorts of sources, why the divides between News and Entertainment in the broadcasting company? Between the Fiction department and the Newspapers in the publishing company? Is news was drama, couldn't it get some of drama's budget?

The answer is the money will come when people pay for it. Deep-pocketed benefactors, whether they be governments (BBC) or individuals (Al-Jazeera) are rare exceptions if one considers the entire news market. Citizen -journalism doesn't get round the problem that most people find news dull. No the solution will come from the market. In other words people will pay for it.

"But the internet public don't like paying for anything on-line!" I hear you say. I'm not sure how true this conventional wisdom is. Lots of people do pay for lots of things on-line - books, movies and music. And as people are increasingly finding out when their free stuff fails - there's no-one to complain to if you don't pay for it. When you've put some money down you get to shout at someone. I think most of the early resistance has gone, as companies come to the fore who are "real" (Google or Microsoft vs. one more anonymous M-Matrix Solutions Media type thing); fears about credit-card fraud fade, more and more people experience through Amazon or eBay, buying stuff on-line, and the main users of the internet, the young, get older and in turn have more money.

But the truth is they won't pay for it if it's dull. Or bland. Or boring. That's where the real work has to be done. Make news fascinating, page-turning, thrilling stuff and you're on to a winner. AND you'll get your money.

The Newspaper Disease

From Roger Black

.... wrong ideas, ones that have tripped up journalism over the last 50 years

Reporters, led by The Newspaper Guild, acted on the assumption that their profession was as permanent as that of doctors and lawyers .... More than a profession, the newsroom was convinced that journalism was a public trust ... Journalists believed that they had deserved this trust. The business was so good that the permanence of their social institution was taken for granted.

[BUT!] .... People bought the newspapers, not so much because they needed them, but because they liked them. Newspapers were useful, yes, and even necessary during wars and recessions, but people paid money for them because they were interesting and sometimes fun.

The 1920s-style, general-assignment reporter (cf., The Front Page) who could cover anything and write it up beautifully, all the while drinking heavily, was actually interested in selling newspapers. He (and it was mostly male in those days, notwithstanding His Girl Friday, the remake of The Front Page, starring Rosalind Russell) took delight in a zesty mix of crooks, crackpots, clowns and crooked politicians. Newspapers ran the photo of plane crashes, the maps of battles, the profiles of movie queens and breakaway baseball players and random escaped zoo animals. There were not a lot of correspondents down at the city hall waiting for press releases.

....

What is needed is a fundamental restructuring of the newspaper business. And it has gotten too late to expect the inmates to redesign the asylum. It’s going to have to be done by the proprietors. Willful, single-minded, near-genius proprietors like the ones who built the business. ....

Newspapers have about a year to get rid of all the people who can’t pull their own weight and to redeploy all the smart energetic journalists who can find the great stories and push them out to print, web and video. Some papers still have lots of talent, but they must push it to the front so readers can find it and find that they like it. Papers who continue to bury the smart people (or have already driven them away) will not make the cut. With the current recession, if newspapers don't move quickly, the market will crush them.

Digg? I'd rather bury the whole thing

I don't know why everyone is getting so excited by Digg, it's a pain in the arse. I like the idea of clicking on a button at the bottom of an article that says, "Hey this is a good one! Read this!". But I don't want to "write a description". I don't want to sort it into a topic area. I'm not a publicist for this thing, for goodness sake! I just want to click and go. And not only that, after "digging" something, it wisks you off to its homepage, instead of letting you continue your crawl through the web. Waste of space if you ask me.

Rev. Wright

If you want to actually watch it for yourself:


The Press Club moderator distinguishes herself with her sour face. Though to be fair, I think they would have been better letting in less guests.

A short film that will stun you, guaranteed.
Part 1
Part 2

Tip of the hat to this guy