Jul 10

Why I live in Los Angeles…

Posted: under Uncategorized.

One in an occasional series. Friday Night Jazz at the LACMA. [...more]

One in an occasional series.

Friday Night Jazz at the LACMA.

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Jul 08

Terry Gilliam’s Giant Foot

Posted: under Uncategorized.

Try as you might, you cannot look at this thing without hearing that squashing raspberry sound in your head…. [...more]

Try as you might, you cannot look at this thing without hearing that squashing raspberry sound in your head….

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Jul 08

Opening Night at Spamalot

Posted: under Uncategorized.
Tags: silly theatee

Living up to the title… … best if we do not go there. It is a very silly play. [...more]

Living up to the title…

… best if we do not go there. It is a very silly play.

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Jun 29

Duce: The Cat Who Would Not Be Caged

Posted: under Multimedia, Uncategorized, journalism.
Tags: cat, death, Duce, life, loss, love

On Friday, I had to lost my cat Duce to a terrible illness. I am going to devote this post to remembering him, because he was such a large & special part of my life for the last 8 years. This is the last notice my friend will receive on this earth, and I want to do this right, to honor what he meant to me and to the other people he charmed and brightened the lives of. [...more]

On Friday, I lost my cat Duce to a terrible and swift-striking illness. I am going to devote this post to remembering him, because he was such a large & special part of my life for the last 8 years.  This is the last notice my friend will receive on this earth, and I want to do this right, to honor what he meant to me and to the other people he charmed and brightened the lives of.

If this strikes you as over the top, please click over to the regularly scheduled media criticism & analysis; but let me have a moment here, please, because this has struck me at a deep & unexpected level.

Our Honeymoon Never Ended

I got Duce just before 9/11.  I have told the story often, because it explains a lot about our relationship.

I was looking for a cat as a companion to Faust; a snaggletoothed tabby I’ve had since 1994.  I went to a big pet adoption event at the La Brea tar pits, looking for a kitten, since Faust is a little timid, and I didn’t want to bring in a snarly cat that would fight with him and beat him up.

I saw a cage with a sign on it that said “Tommy.”  In it was a big gray tabby, who looked a lot like my other cat Mephisto, who had run away.  I opened up the cage and took out “Tommy,” and he put his big paws on my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. Then he started butting his big head against my chin and purring. I petted him for a few minutes, then put him back in the cage, intending to move on to find a kitten.

When Duce wanted your attention, you knew it. He would let nothing stand in his way when he wanted some special bonding time.

Duce immediately started yowling and biting the bars of the cage, trying to get back out to me, reaching through with his paws desperately.  It was absolutely touching.  The woman working that booth told me that he had been out on the street for probably six months, that he had been stuck in a cage for six weeks, and that this was his last chance. If they didn’t find him a new home, they were going to have to give him the needle the next day.  He was set to “walk the kitty Green Mile.”  He was not a wild street cat - he had been neutered and his front paws had been (clumsily) de-clawed.  He was a lovable, friendly cat, but most people were looking for kittens and that he had been stuck in that cage for six months.

He was miserable in that cage, and stared out at me, as he twisted and strained to reach out and touch me with his great big paws.

“OK, OK, you got me,” I said resignedly. I signed the paperwork and put Duce into a cardboard cat-carrier and walked the three blocks back to my house.  To acclimate him to his new surroundings, I shut “Tommy,” who I quickly renamed “Deuce” - as in “Mephisto 2″ because he looked so much like the cat who had run away - in a spare bedroom.  I gave him food & water, and to settle him down to his new home, I slept in the bed with him.  Deuce, soon to be spelled as “Duce,” spent that first entire night sleeping on the pillow above my head, licking my hair and purring loudly.  He was so happy to be out of the cage, and I could feel the way that he appreciated the way I was lavishing attention on him.

A couple days later, still trying to acclimate him to his new house & brother, I went to check on Duce.  I had cracked a window to let some air into the room.  In my absence, Duce had jumped onto the narrow window sill, pushed the screen aside - despite the fact that it had been stapled into place - and squeezed through the narrow bars.  He was gone.  I was stricken with guilt and berated myself; I figured Duce had run off to wherever his old house was, following the homing instinct animals seem to possess.

Hard to describe his walk - not a strut, not that arrogant. Perhaps a stalk...

But the next morning, there he was, sitting patiently by the front door, meowing to be let in.  I rushed to praise him for coming back (rather than punishing him - which would send the message that I hated that he had come home), and he rubbed his big head against my leg and then sauntered inside, in search of breakfast.

I soon learned that there was no real way to keep Duce in the house.

Any little crack in a window, a door left unattended for a second - hell, he once tried to crawl up the chimney - and Duce would be gone, out in search of adventure in the wide, wide, fascinating world.

Duce refused to sit inside the house and let life pass him by.  No matter what the consequences, no matter how dangerous it might be, he never backed down.  Not an inch.

I tried to find a compromise - I got a little kitty harness, put Duce into it, and tried to see if he would just walk the sidewalk on the end of a leash.  Duce just laid down on the lawn, clearly depressed and uncomprehending.  I tried to be enthusiastic, to get him to explore the world with me standing by to protect him from it.  But no.  It was to be total freedom or nothing for Duce.

Catnip mice were considered quite tasty.

Eventually, we settled into a routine. He would wake me up as soon as it got light, I would stagger to the back door and let him out, hoping that he would stay in the enclosed back yard.  By the time I got back to bed, I would hear Duce climbing the 8-foot fence next to the bedroom window, teetering for a second to judge conditions, and then dropping over with a thump.

Later, as I got ready for work, I would hear Duce yowing from the front porch. I would let him in; he already had bacon on his breath, and I eventually figured out that he had established friendships with my neighbors, and a little old lady down the block was sweet on him, and gave him bacon every morning.  The little scavenger.

One day, when my parents were in town for a visit, my dad & I were sitting on the front porch, talking.  We stopped as we spotted Duce across the street, trotting down the sidewalk.  In front of him was a woman walking two huge, fierce-looking German Shepherds.  Duce paid them no heed whatsoever, weaving through her legs and past the dogs on his way to his spot, sleeping under a bush on the front lawn. “Would you look at that cat? Now that’s confidence,” my dad marveled.

I moved a couple of times, in the next years, but no matter where I went, Duce quickly became famous in my neighborhood. I would be jogging a couple of blocks from my house, and I would see Duce, sprawled out on the sidewalk on his back, as someone rubbed his tummy.  “Hey, that’s my cat!” I would say.

Duce would run ahead of people and do a curious shoulder roll on the ground, winding up on his back & exposing his belly for rubbing.

“Oh, Duce is yours? He comes over all the time,” I was told, over and over again. He had his own life that I could only guess at.

Not that it was always fun & games. Duce had a big sense of responsibility, and he felt it was his job to protect his house and his yard.  This, despite the fact that he had no front claws.

I found him on the roof of my neighbor’s house, because my neighbor had a raccoon living in his chimney and Duce thought that was just unacceptable.

I wound up taking Duce to the vet at least three times, all clawed or chewed up. “Fighting out of his weight class again,” is how Janine put it.

This is after we came home last summer; not only had our house been robbed, but Duce had been wounded, and his poor tail was hanging because of an abcess.

But no matter how much punishment Duce took, he never backed down.  I don’t know if it was courage or stubbornness, or some form of deep refusal to accept any limitations whatsoever.  In his mind, he was the King Cat, and trespassers had best beware.

But he was not just an ornery fighter. What made Duce special was the tenderness that he had with people. He was the most dog-like cat I’ve ever known. Wherever people were - that’s where he wanted to be.

Duce worked the room at parties like a veteran Hollywood agent, making deep eye contact, flattering guests with his wide-eyed enthusiastic attention that made you feel like you were a movie star about to be discovered, and leaving behind his calling card (a wisp of shed fur).   LA’s Westside Writer’s Group all came to know Duce and addressed thank-you cards to him after our gatherings here.

Janine said she knew the first time she saw Duce and I together that we could be a couple, because when I picked Duce up and cradled him in my arms, Duce responded by squirming in utter happiness, bumping his head into my chin.

Janine often showed off how Duce would “hug” her - he put his paws on her shoulders and clung to her, content to be carried around.  Well, at least until what we called his “Paw Pilot” went off and reminded him he had an urgent appointment kicking the ass of some pretender to his throne.  That, or a nap.

Duce loved to hug Janine, and vice-versa, obviously.

When I finally moved us into this house, I felt that at last I had found a place where Duce could simultaneously be free and protected.  We have a huge back yard (well, for Los Angeles, at least), enclosed by high fences and thick shrubbery on all sides.  I made sure that the kitchen door had a flap so he could come and go as he pleased; the lack of that in previous places had led Duce to mark his territory inside the house, ruining a couple of otherwise nice couches.

The yard was full of deep clover and I figured he would have more than enough to do here without going wandering. Besides, I had built high fences on all sides.

He was so excited to use the clover as cover to pounce on the birds nearby. He never got one, but that didn't stop him from trying...

By now, I should have known what was coming.  Fences were made for other, lesser animals. I found Duce on top of the garage - I still don’t know how he managed that with no claws.  I would see him doing the balance-beam act on top of the 8-foot fence. He dug and burrowed little passages under it.  And he spent hours chasing critters around the bushes, sometimes bringing half-eaten mice into the house as a kind of “back atcha” offering to us.  Again, I made sure to praise Duce effusively for his presents, even if I discovered them by stepping into a squishy mess in the middle of the night.

But the most special bonding time we had happened in the hammock I strung outside on the patio we built.  Duce would wander over and stand on his hind legs, paws on the rim, eyes asking my permission to come aboard.  I would reach down and scoop him up, or he would jump on his own, and then would come the ritual. I rubbed his face until he drooled in pleasure, purring so hard he sometimes coughed. Then he would settle down into the crook of my arm as I read or talked on the phone.

I could go on and on - about the Japanese couple that lived next door to me in Culver City that wept when I moved and begged me not to take Duce away, and showed up with special salmon dinners in Tupperware for him.  Or my neighbor in the front half of the duplex, who showed me how he and Duce sat on the couch, watching Dodger games and eating snacks while I was at work.  Our dinner parties usually ended with us all sitting on the couch and talking, while Duce went from person to person, soaking up the love and attention before settling into my lap.

Duce represented for me all the traits I aspire to: loyalty, courage, unshakeable self-confidence and conviction, an unquenchable curiosity about the world, and the resilience to bounce back from the wounds and cruelties of the world and still maintain a bottomless capacity to love and be loved.

In the hammock with the phone; when Janine was off shooting videos, Duce wanted to hear her voice, and she wanted to hear him purr. I could never get him to take messages, though...

The trouble started a month ago.  Duce had started acting strangely aloof, spending all his time outside, hiding in the bushes. He came in for meals, but only ate a few bites.  We just figured he was acting moody, or that he had found another soft touch in the neighborhood, and was “eating out” again.

I thought this was cute, but it was actually a sign of trouble ahead...

It turned out that he had a blockage of his intestine, and while we were gone for a week on vacation, Duce spiraled into crisis. He lost about 8 pounds, and his sleek, silky fur was rough and matted.  Our pet-sitter took him to the vet, and they prescribed laxatives.  But within a couple of days, he was in crisis, and we took him in for an emergency operation.  His intestine had ruptured, and Duce was in agony from peritonitis, with big infections in his abdomen.  What we thought was a minor problem became life-threatening. Worst of all, it meant that Duce was in the place he hated worst in the world - back in a cage, far from the people he loved and trusted, unable to explore the world.

Janine & I kicked ourselves for spending so much money on a cat at a time when the economy is so unstable.  But when Duce came out of the hospital, and as we nursed him back to health, we started congratulating each other for rescuing our beloved cat once more.

By Thursday morning, we sat out on our back patio, as Duce ran around the yard, excitedly sniffing the plants.  “Our kitty is back,” we said, and it all seemed worth it.

But only hours later, on Thursday night, Duce made a noise unlike any I had ever heard him make. It was a shouted “AROOO!” that contained depths of pain and despair I hope never to hear again.  Duce then started vomiting all over the dining room floor.

We hoped that it was just a case of food poisoning, or maybe some kind of infection. But the next morning, Duce crawled on his own into the kitty carrier - an acknowledgment that he had given up, that he knew that something was wrong with him.  Normally, it was a struggle to get him into it, as he knew that meant a trip to the vet.

Duce had barfed up everything he had in him and more during the night. He was dehydrated and panting, and drool was coming out of his mouth. Not the good kind, that meant I was petting him in just the right way - but foam and awful gurgling.

This was in the hammock; rubbing his cheeks and then his head would make him purr and drool happily. A little gross, sure, but endearing.

Duce was still so thin from his previous ordeal that the x-rays couldn’t show what, if anything, had happened in his abdomen. The vet said she had felt a hard mass, and speculated that there was a tumor in there that they had missed in the first surgery a month ago.

I looked down at Duce. He had crawled onto our laps, and lay there, too weak to move, panting. He had put his chin onto my hand the way he had done thousands of times before, but immediately started convulsing in pain.

I knew he wouldn’t survive another surgery. And even if he did, it would mean weeks in the cage at the vet, IVs in his now-frail arms, pain wracking his guts. And that a couple of weeks after that, it was likely that we would be right back there again.

I gulped for air. “I think it’s time,” I rasped. “I just can’t put him through this again. No more pain.”

And so the vet gave Duce the shot and his breathing slowed and he relaxed in Janine & my arms.  I didn’t see him breathe his last, because my eyes weren’t quite working right at that point.

As I said, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.  Duce was my friend, my constant companion, and, as far as a feline can be so, an inspiration to me.  Uncompromising courage. Boundless affection and loyalty. Resilience. Playfulness. Refusal to be trapped or caged.

What I tell myself is that by the end, Duce’s body had become the cage that he so feared and despised. He was trapped in there, in absolute agony. I had rescued him once eight years ago, from a life spent in misery.

I rescued him from that misery again.  All the stale, worn-out bromides that it was a mercy, that his time had come - they all are true, yes, but they fall short.

I set Duce, The Cat Who Would Not Be Caged, free.  It was the last gift I could give him, after he had given me so much.

If there is a heaven, I will surely see him there.

Rest in peace, big guy.  I love you and miss you.

Sleep in peace, kitty.

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Jun 22

Circulate: A “Find Engine” By Any Other Name Seeks to Monetize Online News Content

Posted: under Newspaper Deathwatch, Unconventional Research, Webconomics, Wrongheaded solutions.

This came to me via the Media Giraffe project at UMass (and a very special h/t to Janine Warner, currently filming a video for Microsoft up in Seattle), and I was inspired to write a long comment in response to it. Basically, Circulate is the creation of a team at the Donald Reynolds Journalism Institute [...] [...more]

This came to me via the Media Giraffe project at UMass (and a very special h/t to Janine Warner, currently filming a video for Microsoft up in Seattle), and I was inspired to write a long comment in response to it.

Circulate is a holistic, user-centric solution aimed broadly at sustaining journalism in a digital world, with specific relevance to the ongoing exploration of paid-content models for newspaper Web sites. Circulate enables experimentation with subscription and per-item user charges, but as a user-centric content discovery tool, Circulate goes well beyond the announced features of other systems that have been proposed in that space.

Circulate will be rolled out in phases. Initially, it will be a browser add-on that you can have always handy as you move around the Web. Circulate will function on multiple platforms to allow full portability: a mobile application is planned, possibly first as an iPhone application, along with user start page and e-mail notification options.

Oh Christ, I thought. Not another scheme to try to gin up a variation on the paywall strategy that has been a disaster everywhere it’s been tried.  Well, let me qualify that - it’s been a disaster when erecting the paywall was thought to be the only measure needed to “solve” the “problem” of the internet. 

As a Circulate user, you’ll be able to have an account with a home-base publisher, like the local paper, and optionally profile yourself. Then the Circulate system will go to work and discover and present to you information that’s really relevant to your interests. You’ll be able to set alerts if you want, but you don’t have to. Circulate won’t start out carrying advertising, but eventually when it does, you’ll see advertising that matters to you, not blindly-aimed mass-market ads. And it sets up the possibility that you could optionally subscribe, through your home-base publisher, to valuable information at hundreds and eventually thousands of news and other websites, all at a low monthly blanket rate.

Circulate will feature social functionality, so that you can share and discuss content (but its content recommendations are not sourced through “collaborative filtering”). Over time, you will be able to select additional features on Circulate as they are developed.

Importantly, a core, fundamental value at CircLabs is user privacy. While Circulate will work best when the user shares information, that will happen with the user’s explicit permission, not by virtue of obscure language buried in user agreements no one reads.

Well, bravo.

Interesting concept, guys - although I have to admit that reading through the first few graphs, my stomach sank when I read “charging for online content.” Way too many collective clock cycles are being devoted to coming up with arcane ways to try to extract some kind of revenue stream from online readers.  Most tend to be veneers over the failed strategy of erecting paywalls over existing content, without really given a thought to how the core product has to be radically different for the consumer to be willing to yank out the wallet.

Reading further, it became evident that what you’re doing is a variation on the “Find Engine” concept - that is, that the app/site/widget/whatever will take over for the Almighty Google, and serve you up the information that you need, when, where & how you need it. 

OK, that’s interesting.

You also addressed the core problem with a Find Engine - that is, if the app/whatever knows enough about you to be able to accurately (and if it isn’t accurate, what use would it be?) know what you want, then isn’t that a treasure trove of information about you that could be hacked/exploited/sold?  Well, yeah. We all start to feel a bit creepy about the thought that something in the machine knows us & is ratting us out.  Despite the fact that it happens all the time …

Well, to a certain extent, it does. Big online ad agencies get quiet & change the subject when people bring up the idea of a “Universal Cookie.” Which would be far easier to implement if Circulate takes off.

Anyway - one suggestion. You talk about mobile, and indicate that one of the first moves might be to develop an iPhone app.  While I applaud your willingness to engage with this new platform, you might want to check the numbers.  At a recent Online News Association event I helped organize, Nick Montes of Viva Vision laid out the numbers involved with selling content - I’m posting the video and a description in the next day or so.

Briefly: the iPhone has market penetration of 9M handsets in a US market of 250M+ handsets. Nice, but not staggering.

But the real eye-opener was that Verizon makes about $20 billion a year from selling/licensing/streaming content.  The much-touted iPhone App Store is likely to make Apple about $300 million.

Basically, you’d be pouring sweat equity into constructing something for a platform that comprises about 1.5% of the money on the table…

Anyway - I look forward to seeing what Circulate looks & feels like. At least you’re trying.

Technorati Tags: Circulate, Find Engine, newspaper curmudgeon, online commerce, paywalls, charging for content, newspapers, information engine

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Jun 09

Moving Pictures: How Blogging Tells a Story in Slices (and Twitter does it in crumbs)

Posted: under new media.

First, a h/t to Jeff Jarvis for this one - it really rings a bell for me, particularly in light of my own experiences last fall with the “Obama-Haters Fall for Nigerian Prince Scam” story. Basically, the insight is that traditional media - newspapers, to be precise - tend to approach news the way photography [...] [...more]

First, a h/t to Jeff Jarvis for this one - it really rings a bell for me, particularly in light of my own experiences last fall with the “Obama-Haters Fall for Nigerian Prince Scam” story.

Basically, the insight is that traditional media - newspapers, to be precise - tend to approach news the way photography approached capturing images before the invention of the movie camera and long strips of flexible, high-speed film. That is, to work and work, stick your head under the big black sheet, remove the cap from the front of the big heavy unwieldy camera, and tell everyone not to move for a half-minute or so.

The parallels to newspapers are that the news only happens once per day.  That it takes a whole lot of effort and preparation, and the use of crazy heavy equipment (ever tried to deal with a jammed printing press? I did, on my first day working at the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram) that restricts what you can do and how frequently you can do it.  Meanwhile the movie camera (and the web) allows you to do an ongoing series of snapshots of reality; one that gives far richer context to the events and brings them to life in a whole new way.

In this context, I guess you’d have to say that Twitter is the mini-DV camcorder to newspaper’s Matthew Brady-style bellows & glass plate camera.

So what does this mean to journalism & trying to filter & report reality back to a wider audience?

If the truth must be corrected - wouldn’t the truth finally
have to be the sum total of process AND product? Shouldn’t it be a
document of changes which tells the truth about editing, as well as
about the information being edited? And wouldn’t it imply information
is only momentarily true. That the end of a story doesn’t  have to do
with truth it has to do with interest or the loss thereof?

(snip)

But journalism? Is it about the artist or about the facts? And
how can there be facts if the facts change? We don’t want the
journalist to be a slight of hand man. Yet blogging real time makes
that so. Different from newspaper news. So shouldn’t the document be
different?

Should not the process of accruing information then be documented ?

Well, yeah. Since my first foray into producing multimedia reports, I’ve felt that one of the strongest things that the web has to offer both the content producer and the audience is the ability to let the readers “peek behind the curtain” and see all the things that reporters saw & considered, and omitted from the final report.

“Every edit is a lie.”
       –Jean-Luc Godard

Not so much. I tend to think - and this blogged is named because of that - the basic function of a reporter/content producer is to filter the reality stream down into the essential.  If you’ve ever had to sit through a friend or family member’s unedited vacation videos, you’ll immediately know what I’m talking about.  The equivalent these days is watching the streaming video coming through Mogulus or Kyte from cellphones around the world (and soon to be coming from iPhones - w00t! x infinity).

So while the process of editing, filtration, curation (whatever that buzzword is interpreted to mean this week) to arrive at the digestible info-bit is the value-added, I do think that being as open and transparent about what you’ve done is also a big value.  I learned this from my case study that I did years ago with Schibsted Media - they have three levels of online video: 1) the short clip on the front page that teases readers into clicking into the article; 2) the edited 30-second to 5-minute piece and 3) the whole unedited video.

As Sverre Munck told me at the time, there aren’t that many people who want to see the whole interview and watch all the outtakes, but those who do are fanatically devoted to it, and are your most loyal readers.

To me, it allows the audience to go into to your subject material and draw out their own construct.  If they want to do a mash-up or remix using some of my video, by all means, go for it.  I don’t do this lightly - there are a lot of things about trusting the audience that still give me the heebie-jeebies.  I can quite easily imagine scenarios where a well-funded organization - let’s say the coal strip-mining industry - does some serious astro-turfing, and goes into reports about the effects of dumping mountaintops into formerly clean streams, with an eye to cherry-picking data to justify their profit margins.  And then using the assembled plastic chorus to yammer incessantly in blogs, chatrooms & the growing “info-cloud” to drown out the reporters and citizens who are complaining about their kids growing up with tentacles instead of legs.

The thing is: that already happens today. 

Again, going back to my experience with the Obama-hatin’ story, and the lessons I learned from it: openness and trusting your audience can empower them to deputize themselves and take the story further, and in directions that the original reporter could never have imagined.  Telling your story in slices, with the audience chipping in along the way, will probably be the future model for how real serious investigative journalism is done.  I hope.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, moving pictures, process journalism, trust the audience, crowdsourcing, newspapers

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Jun 05

Free at last! The cat comes home…

Posted: under Uncategorized.

Janine is all smiles as we finally get to bring our sick cat home. He’s about 1/4 his normal weight and still so fragile; but at least we got him put of the cage be hates so much. [...more]

Janine is all smiles as we finally get to bring our sick cat home. He’s about 1/4 his normal weight and still so fragile; but at least we got him put of the cage be hates so much.

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Jun 04

Newspaper Suicide Pact

Posted: under Uncategorized.
Tags: New Media Migration, newspaper death spiral, Newspaper Deathwatch

Do not count me - yet - amongst those who hope that, well, now that it's (allegedly) become clear that newspapers are fated to die, then let's just get this over with. I still think that they can turn things around - the recent LA Times excellent Mapping LA project is a great step towards building the kind of hyperlocal database and information exchange network that could take off and fulfill all those dreams about the possibilities of digital local coverage. While I am all for the development of the new content & biz models touted in Xark!, I don't think they are ready - yet - to step into the line of fire and take over in collecting and distributing the information that we need to be able to function effectively as a society. Hell, as a civilization. The anger in the screen on Xark! is palpable, and I will cop to feeling it on more than one occasion. But I am not yet ready to give in to it. to throw in the towel and just lean back and toast marshmallows over the flames. [...more]

We’ve reached the “Aw to hell with them, let it all burn” stage

Just a quick late-night hit while I prepare to shoot an interview tomorrow at KCET.

I’ve spent much of the last couple years of my life trying to come up with case studies, strategies, training programs, tools and mash-ups of all the aforementioned, all aimed at illuminating a clear pathway for the newspaper industry to follow to save itself from “The Crisis.”  My last big project was the Audience Planbook for the NAA, which was supposed to lay out a step-by-step process to building new businesses that take advantage of the technological innovations that have changed the way we get news.

I’m not so delusional and narcissistic as to think that I have some revealed, holy wisdom that can turn around the momentum of a massive, multi-billion dollar industry by myself.  But I had hoped that maybe my voice, along with the voices of those who I recruited (shanghaied? hoodwinked?) into writing chapters in the Planbook for me, would spur some kind of change.  This hope has grown harder to sustain in the last couple of months.

And then there’s a straight brass-knuckles shot to the chops like this, on the Xark! blog:

What will these media executives do when that reality hits them?
When these debt-burdened chains, stripped of journalistic talent by a
decade of profiteering, their web traffic reduced by 60 percent by
their paid-content follies, their pockets emptied by the cost of the
proprietary paywall systems offered by Journalism Online LLC and other
opportunistic vendors, what will they do?

Will they buck up and
go back out into the fray with fresh ideas and leadership? Or will they
fold, casting bitter eulogies to their own imagined glories as they
exit the stage?

The chances of them adapting well to another
failure are dubious. Remember, these are the same people who have acted
as if there were no other options, even when those options were
practically gift-wrapped for them. As if Newspaper Next never happened. As if commerce hubs and C3 and all the interesting, exciting ideas that are practically everywhere today do not exist.

They don’t get it. They don’t want to get it. And in many cases, they’re literally paid not to get it.

America’s
journalism infrastructure – from corporate giants to non-profit
foundations like the American Press Institute and the Newspaper
Association of America – is funded by dying companies. So when you hear
about efforts to save newspapers (and, by extension, journalism),
understand that answers that don’t return the possibility of double-digit profits and perpetual top-down control aren’t even considered answers. They’re not even considered.

They’ll do anything to survive… so long as it doesn’t involve change.

Click on over and read the rest of the piece. And then go to the comments section - because the action is always in the comments - and check out the long, impassioned note from someone trapped in a sinking newsroom.

Do not count me - yet - amongst those who hope that, well, now that it’s (allegedly) become clear that newspapers are fated to die, then let’s just get this over with.  I still think that they can turn things around - the recent LA Times excellent Mapping LA project is a great step towards building the kind of hyperlocal database and information exchange network that could take off and fulfill all those dreams about the possibilities of digital local coverage.

While I am all for the development of the new content & biz models touted in Xark!, I don’t think they are ready - yet - to step into the line of fire and take over in collecting and distributing the information that we need to be able to function effectively as a society. Hell, as a civilization.

The anger in the screen on Xark! is palpable, and I will cop to feeling it on more than one occasion.  But I am not yet ready to give in to it. to throw in the towel and just lean back and toast marshmallows over the flames.

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Jun 03

Excuse for not posting: Duce the Cat

Posted: under Uncategorized.
Tags: Blogging, cats, vet

I’ve been remiss in posting here for the last couple of weeks. Some if that has been because of all-day video shoots and travel to & from the Bay Area. But this is the other reason. My cat Duce, who I rescued from a cage just before 9/11, is clinging to life after an intestinal blockage [...] [...more]

I’ve been remiss in posting here for the last couple of weeks. Some if that has been because of all-day video shoots and travel to & from the Bay Area.

But this is the other reason. My cat Duce, who I rescued from a cage just before 9/11, is clinging to life after an intestinal blockage worsened into peritonitis over the weekend.

I’ll return to writing about digital media & new revenue models in due time. But for now, just send some positive virtual vibrations (in a Bob Marley meets Twitter kinda way) in the general direction of the Century Vet in Culver City.

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May 27

Posting from the iPhone

Posted: under Uncategorized.
Tags: iphone, mobile contdnt, moblogging

Getting the Wordpress app to work on the iPhone has been a bit of a struggle, and one that I really haven’t had time to wrestle with - until now. I’ve had a couple days here in West Marin, and the utter breakdown of my Vaio (aka the $2800 paperweight) has spurred me totry to [...] [...more]

Getting the Wordpress app to work on the iPhone has been a bit of a struggle, and one that I really haven’t had time to wrestle with - until now.

I’ve had a couple days here in West Marin, and the utter breakdown of my Vaio (aka the $2800 paperweight) has spurred me totry to make this work. So here is a test-post to see if this truly can work from anywhere…

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