The Rage Diaries

Vaya con dios, BPP

The NYT effectively gave the Bryant Park Project's two-week notice on Sunday with "Public Radio to Cancel an Experiment." The bad news is broken with little industry context, as this:

It’s an expensive failure — the first-year budget was more than $2 million — and comes at a time when NPR is facing the same financial constraints as other news media thanks to higher costs and a downturn in underwriting.

was actually not as expensive as you might think, given that $2 million had to produce 10 hours of programming weekly for at least 26 weeks. Or so says public radio professional Jesse Thorn, in a well-researched and nuanced post on Metafilter. Credit to him for cutting through a lot of BS arguments there ("I listen to public radio. I never heard of BPP. Therefore, because I never heard of it, it can't be good.") and making a point about what BPP was trying to do:

I listen to public radio too, but you can simply look at the numbers and know that the content, tone and style are borderline hostile to people outside of a very narrow demographic strip. I'm glad some of you are proud to be in that group, but that doesn't excuse public radio from serving people outside of it. That certainly includes young people, but it also includes people who simply have different cultural perspectives, whether it's because of age, geography, race, whatever.

Needless to say, news of the BPP's imminent demise has galvanized we podcast listeners. Thanks to the outpouring of "Nooooooo!"s in the comments, the blog's now posted how you can register your opinion with the higher-ups at NPR. Hint: it does not involve threatening to withhold pledge money.

I am personally skeptical of any write-in campaign's effectiveness, but I'd like to be proven wrong.

What drives me batty about foodie media

So Phil and I were sacked out on the couch the other night, and our TiFaux did deliver unto us the Good Eats episode "Tuna, Surprise." I was pleased, as I currently have twelve 6-oz cans of Starkist in the pantry and am open to finding things to do with them above and beyond the old standard tuna salad.

Sadly, I am still bereft of ideas. The episode focused on Alton advocating that we ditch the humble can for either the pricey tuna-in-a-pouch or the even more pricey tuna-imported-from-Italy. (How pricey, you ask? One four-ounce tin costs $17; I picked up ninety ounces of tuna packed in water -- i.e. fifteen times the quantity -- from Costco for a mere $9.)

This episode stands out as an anomaly, because Good Eats has provided us with many, many great recipes that do not require pricey or hard-to-find ingredients. It has been one of the happy exceptions of foodie media insofar as I am concerned. Our local food section often includes recipes that call for things that can only be mail-ordered, purchased on an installment plan, or procured up in Yreka on the first Sunday of the month between two and four p.m.

Fair, balanced and in love with the Photoshop filter menu

The same "news" "organization" that thought it would be cute to refer to Michelle Obama as a baby mama has now decided that verbal distortion of a public image isn't enough. According to MediaMatters:

On the July 2 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade labeled New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe "attack dogs," claiming that Steinberg's June 28 article on the "ominous trend" in Fox News' ratings was a "hit piece." During the segment, however, Fox News featured photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered -- the journalists' teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe's hair moved further back on his head. Fox News gave no indication that the photos had been altered.

As of posting time, Fox News had not yet found a producer upon whom to blame this decision. Nor had they announced their decision to hire Perez Hilton as a digital graphics producer.

Spare me all that baby mama drama

Oh, Fox News, you crazy little vixen. You've just been at sixes and sevens since your number-one lady target eased out of the race. First there was E.D. Hill working herself into a tizzy over the Obamas' secret signal to Hizbollah, and now there's producer Jessica Herzberg's decision to refer to Michelle Obama as a "baby mama."

Below are the issues I have with this little lapse in judgment:

1. "Baby mama" is pretty much understood to be a term that men use to refer to the women they impregnate, but do not maintain a sustained partnership with. Michelle Obama bore her first child after six years of marriage to Barack Obama. In other words, she does not fall within the colloquially understood definition of "baby mama."

2. It is not okay to call Michelle Obama a "baby mama" just because she once referred to her husband as "my baby's daddy." Not to get all "it depends on what the definition of 'is' is," but that apostrophe matters; it's Michelle basically calling him "the father of my children" in a more colloquial manner. Again: not the moral equivalent of calling someone a "baby mama."

2a. And even if Michelle Obama did call her husband a "baby daddy" (which she did not), that doesn't make it okay for any news organization to do so. If you think that any cable news channel calling Michelle Obama  a "baby mama" is okay because you heard once (and incorrectly) that she called her husband a baby daddy, then I'm sure you're fine with any cable channel calling John McCain a cocksucker because you read that he once called his wife a cunt. What? It's not? Then neither is your specious "reasoning" about why it's okay for national news organizations to hang loaded labels on people.

3. And let's not kid ourselves: the phrase "baby mama" is loaded. Just because Tina Fey feels free to use it at the box office doesn't make it okay for every woman to slap it on to other women*. "Baby mama" is another way of saying "welfare queen," and deliberately applying it to the well-educated and accomplished Michelle Obama is a way to make people think, "Oh, Christ, another one of them no-count [fill in the blanks]." It's a race card.

So, yeah. I have a problem with referring to Michelle Obama as anyone's baby mama. I have a problem with Jessica Herzberg's judgment. And I have a problem with anyone who tries to defend what Fox did here. Anyone got a problem with that?

Digital sharecropping it is

You will recall the June 2 post wherein I sputter over how sites like the Huffington Post don't compensate the majority of its writers? Get a load of this:

[Mayhill Fowler] is one of 2,500 people, from writers to academics to accountants, working with Off the Bus, a $200,000 venture launched by the Huffington Post and New Assignment, the brainchild of New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen. The idea is to unleash ordinary folks on the presidential campaign and give them a technology-powered megaphone.

"When you're in the bubble, you cover every story the same way," says Arianna Huffington, founder of the liberal Web site. "At Off the Bus, because they're not part of the professional gaggle, they can come up with their own views of what's happening, which may be different from what the conventional wisdom is saying."

They also have to be well off, since most are given technical support but little reimbursement, although a limited number receive stipends. With help from her lawyer husband, Fowler has been paying for her own cross-country travel, often chasing the Obama bus in a rental car and blogging in her pajamas in the middle of the night.

-- "Amateur Campaign Blogger Scoops the Pros," WaPo, June 9, 08

The Huffington Post generates anywhere between 1.4 and 4 million hits per month. and its annual revenue is "on pact" to increase from $4 mil in 2007 to $7.5 mil this year. ("Huffington Posts a Profit," Portfolio, Nov 07) And yet ... it doesn't pay its writers? It's not even funding this election coverage properly?

(Insert your own snarky comment here on why anyone should bother funding election coverage "properly" when bloggers like Fowler have ambushed the candidates without anything resembling "proper" disclosure.)

I get why people write blogs for free. Lord knows I've been doing it for nearly five years. But my site is fairly small potatoes. When you're talking about a site that rakes in millions of pageviews and millions of dollars, isn't it time to fairly compensate the people who added value to your venture?

Writers would love it if someone wrote them ... a check

Advertising Age's Simon Dumenco posits:

As for the notion of the self-actualized, non-wage-slave blogger? That's turned out to be, for many semi-famous bloggers, complete bullshit. Never mind all the hype about the select few blog stars, mostly in the tech realm, who are actually getting rich doing what they're doing; they've invariably fashioned unhealthy, obsessive-compulsive-disordered lifestyles for themselves way worse than anything any old-media slave drivers ever concocted. (See: GigaOm blogger Om Malik, heart attack victim at 41.)

Meanwhile, many pseudo-celebrity bloggers have finally figured out that they're as disposable -- as cog-in-a-wheel-ish -- as any of the cubicle-dwelling suckers populating old-media combines. That realization started, in part, when Gawker Media dismissed a blogger who didn't make her page-view quota. But just wait until the Huffington Post -- which still doesn't pay most of its bloggers -- tries to sell itself.

-- "From Media Darlings to Public Enemy #1 in Five Years of Less," June 1, 08

I've written on group weblogs for love of the blog, but man, oh, man, at some point you've got to stop being sentimental and start taking a hard look at what your product is worth. I'm a little surprised that the phrase "digital sharecropping" hasn't entered the lexicon of bloggers yet.

I no longer see the allure of the glossies

I was caught without reading material one night last week, so I picked up a copy of Allure and read it on the ferry and later into the night. It was the first time since Blueprint went under that I've picked up a magazine specifically aimed at the ladies, so I think my system was kind of unprepared for the shock*.

After a few minutes of leafing through, all I could think was, I just paid four bucks for a publication that does nothing but tell me how ugly I am. Good lord, I used to subscribe to these things! And I did. I used to justify it with arguments like, "It's mind candy." Swear to God -- every semester at finals time, I'd load up on Cosmo, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Vogue and Self and binge on the glossies between study sessions. All summer, the other lifeguards and I would bring in fresh issues and flip through them on breaks.

Have these things gotten more negative? Have the standards for women's appearances been stealthily climbing up for the last ten years? Or has my tolerance for this crap dropped because I'm no longer exposing myself to it on a regular basis? I don't know. Evidently, the spring issue of Ms. tackles this question, determines that chick media can lead to women's low political efficacy, and according to Jezebel, concludes:

"My research with college age women indicates that the less women consume media, the less they self-objectify, particularly if they avoid fashion magazines. [Emphasis ours.] By shutting out media, girls and women can create mental and emotional space for true self-exploration."

I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but I'd like to explore this thesis more in-depth. It seems sort of weird that any article blaming the media for making women less engaged in the world around them would also advocate dropping media consumption. How are women supposed to get involved in the world when they don't know anything about it? Something's missing -- either in the article summary or the article itself.

My most consistent media exposures at this point are NPR, Comedy Central and the WSJ. Given my recent reaction to Allure, I'm clearly out of touch with whatever pervasive media is sending negative messages about women's appearance. But I am wondering: anyone else notice their reactions to ads changing after upping or lowering their chick-media consumption?

Ah, the little flaw in the aggregation strategy

If aggregating is becoming the best way to make money from content, who's going to undertake the costly business of creating that content?

[...]

[Michael] Wolff argues that the wealth of content on the web from both professionals and the legions of bloggers and other formerly-known-as-amateurs effectively is creating a golden age for content. "I'm tired of that New York Times argument that only the following kind of people create quality content. The range out there is remarkable ... and it's cost-free."

-- "It's Web 3.0 And Someone Else's Content Is King," Advertising Age, Apr 14, 08

I think there will always be a need for reporters and editors. I am sure people can passionately follow a subject and become self-made beat reporters/experts on it ... but I am not sure that everything that needs to be covered will attract the interest of driven, intellectually honest, selfless folks who will provide ace coverage for free. Sometimes, you have to pay people so they'll do the hard or boring work of paying attention for you.

Or is that too cynical?

It's the love child of 'Network' and 'Dancing with the Stars'

Legend has it that on Friday morning, when the streets of Cincinnati are free from traffic, the intrepid newsmen and women of Local 12 bust a move. These folks are bringing it at 5:45 in the morning, which is pretty hard-core, if you ask me.

Begin with the first dance party of the new year, then marvel at Bob Herzog's dedication to the cause when he comes in to dance whilst on vacation.

Oh, the things I miss by not watching TV news. Or by not watching it at 5:45 in the morning. Or by not living in Cincinnati.

If I like it, it's got to be doomed, eh?

So I'm reading Bluelines this morning and this comment caught my eye:

This isn't a reply to this post, but to the announcement that the print product has been cancelled. I am truly, truly sad.

So I clicked off to find the announcement, and while there was nothing on the site, Crain's NY has a piece today from AdAge.com, "Blueprint Folding After Less Than 2 Years." It would appear that the strategy will be to aggressively focus on younger-than-30 women via the Web and bridal magazines:

"After much discussion and analysis we have made a decision to produce Blueprint as focused special interest issues within the home category, which we will introduce to brides-to-be through our Martha Stewart Weddings magazine," Susan Lyne, chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, said in a staff memo this morning. "Bluelines, the Blueprint blog, will continue and we plan to grow Blueprint digital content across our websites."

On one hand, this makes a lot of sense given the audience they're going after. (And I guess it doesn't affect their plans to hold the big online-only January Jumpstart Project in partnership with Apartment Therapy.) It's practically a case study in building brand loyalty among different audiences via different media vectors.

On the other: despite my digital bona fides, there's something about flipping the pages in a magazine that I sometimes prefer. I'll miss Blueprint. And now, at this point, I'm thinking any media outlet I gush about had better start getting nervous, as I'm apparently the kiss of death. (I apologize in advance, Bryant Park Project. I'll try to keep my continued delight over you under wraps.)