http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sun, 4 Feb 2007 11:32:52 EST http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/02/04/113252.php KOBMany people with a serious illness have trouble accepting it; they'll deny it and ignore it for as long as possible. Global warming produces a somewhat similar reaction in some people. This continued doubt has a parallel in the 1964 Surgeon General study that established the link between smoking and cancer. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report last week is unequivocal in its warning about the impact of rising global temperatures. It is as certain about the human cause of global warming as the Surgeon General's report was about the connection between lung cancer and smoking. And, as with the Surgeon General's report, there will be numerous efforts to counter and confuse the IPCC's findings.Following release of Surgeon General's report, its critics - mostly the tobacco companies - sought to challenge its underlying science with their own industry-backed research. There was a public relations effort as well to muddy the issue with claims that, for instance, stopping smoking increases weight and creates another health risk, heart problems. Pick the lesser of two evils.Newspapers, especially during the 1970s, would often get quotes from the Tobacco Institute to “balance” a story about smoking, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence. The Tobacco Institute today exists as a court-ordered document site. Doubt-casting reports about the hazards of smoking were life rafts for people who didn't want to come to terms with the habit. It provided cover for people who refused to act responsibly. And for those who argue that smoking is somehow a “right” – an argument still championed by tobacco companies – I would say that the only reason children take up smoking is because adults continue to influence their behavior. That alone should provide strong moral reason to give up smoking.This denial of science will be true for global warming as well. Industry-backed groups will do all they can to provide cover to lawmakers and others to do less than what is needed and buy time and profit for special interests. Acceptance of the science of global warming and its conclusion that human activity is responsible for it is necessary for real action. Otherwise, the response may be little more than a series of false half-steps similar to those taken by so many smokers who couldn't or didn't want to give up their habit. Politics59173@blogcritics.org Sun, 4 Feb 2007 11:32:52 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/10/07/200447.php KOBAOL pays anywhere from $15 million to $25 million for Weblogs Inc., a network of 85 sites. What does this mean, exactly, you hoo blogger? PaidContent.org reports that Weblogs annual revenue may be about $2 million a year. AOL's purchase price - many multiples above the gross revenue -- is a big bet on the future of blogs. Weblogs properties, such as Engadget, aren't worth millions of dollars alone. The value is in the network. The Network. Weblogs is a top-down network, as I understand it -- most of the blogs were created after the company was formed. Weblogs Inc. solicited ideas for blogs on its Web site. Will this sale prompt established bloggers to form bottom-up networks -- merge existing blogs and build them out? Will AOL rivals buy up the rights to independent blogs and assemble networks that way?Or will media firms clone the best concepts and ideas generated by independent bloggers and assemble fresh brands?Regardless, this sale moves blogging solidly into version 2.0. The 1.0 version was the great awakening thanks to the presidential election. Now that blogs have readers, the commercialization begins on a large scale.And if I were to place bets on the next big move among bloggers, it will be in the direction of collaboration, consolidation -- more intensive traffic building strategies which take more people -- and networks. If the value is in the network, bloggers with a taste for profits will build networks. Sometimes, when companies are bought the new owners sell off divisions to unpack value for shareholders. But in the case of Weblogs, the message here is that the sum is worth more than parts.Start adding. Culture37592@blogcritics.org Fri, 7 Oct 2005 20:04:47 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/09/17/113653.php KOBBloggers are beginning to meet more often in the DC Metro area. In person. Over drinks. And if you were looking for a reason to start a blog, this is a good one. I keep track of blogs in the DC area on dcblogs.com I categorize local bloggers and highlight interesting posts from local blogs. There are efforts in a number of cities and states to list and index blogs but my focus is to offer more than that -- I want to help build a local blog community.By highlighting local blogs, I want to encourage readers to explore other blogs and broaden DC blog readership. But this community building is taking an interesting direction. There's a marked increase of informal gatherings by bloggers. The blog authors that organize them often extend open invites to the DC blogging community. We also have a local Weblogger group that is also seeing an increase in attendance. This is more than just people getting together for drinks: it's networking. Bloggers are making new friends and building supportive social networks that may also lead to dates and job leads. Encourage development of your local blog community by reading local blogs, leaving comments, and organizing or attending gatherings of bloggers. I've learned a lot about the city and met new people because of blogging. Blogging returns far more than I could have ever imagined. Culture36355@blogcritics.org Sat, 17 Sep 2005 11:36:53 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/06/23/192656.php KOBThe ownership society is working out just nicely. You can own your home as long as the government doesn't want it for a shopping mall. Thank you very much. The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision today backing New London, Conn.'s economic development land grab may set the stage for another disastrous redevelopment era.I'm a Connecticut native and worked as a newspaper reporter in that state for nearly 20 years, and I've seen little good come from the state's urban economic developments efforts. In the 1960s, New Britain, Connecticut, bought into the dream that every urban problem can be solved with a bulldozer. It built a Y-shaped highway system through its downtown that destroyed neighborhoods and historic buildings. It relocated companies to industrial parks and built sterile, monumentally ugly brick apartment complexes for displaced residents. New Britain lost most of its architectural heritage and soon most of its retail businesses. The highways made it easy for residents to travel to malls and shopping centers in the leafy suburbs. Hartford, Conn., took a similar path. It obliterated historic areas and established neighborhoods along the Connecticut River to build "Constitution Plaza" - a concrete, soulless, lifeless wasteland of glass office buildings.But Hartford didn't learn. It's now finishing a $1 billion project called Adrian's Landing, which, I'll boldly predict, is similarly doomed.Not surprising New London is trying this bulldozing approach. Connecticut's wealth, its office parks and malls, are in the suburbs, not its cities. The cities are dealing with heavy property tax loads, populations that are skewed toward young, poor, aging, and fixed income. The schools are struggling and there's crime galore. These developments fix nothing. The architectural renderings are eye candy for desperate mayors who are out of money and ideas. Now, with this court ruling they can more easily buy into these development fictions. This happens everywhere. Where I live today, in Washington DC., the government approved a baseball stadium in the hope it would spur economic development. Right. Cleveland built a downtown stadium in 1992, and was ranked in 2004 by the Census Bureau as the poorest in the nation, with 31.3% of its population below the poverty level. Ownership society? Someone has to pay. Thank You Supreme Court. Politics31515@blogcritics.org Thu, 23 Jun 2005 19:26:56 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/23/134101.php KOBLeonard Downie, the executive editor of the Washington Post, needs to shut up.Downie spoke this week on the future of newspapers at the University of Kentucky before a "packed crowd," reports the Lexington Herald-Leader.The newspaper reports:"The fact that cutting costs makes papers less appealing hasn't occurred to corporate managers," he said. "But despite the real challenges facing them, newspapers aren't dying. They're struggling to adapt."Here's what Downie should say to the budding journos in Kentucky:I want newspapers to fail. I want to see the chains die, have earnings crashes, circulation scandals and more layoffs. I want the streets filled with laid off, angry reporters and editors.The newspaper business has to destroy itself to save itself.First the family-owned papers died. They were taken over by chains that bought regional clusters, set cookie-cutter approaches, and slashed the benefits of the survivors.At a newspaper where six reporters might have covered a small city, there are now only two.The slash-and-burn chains aren't going to turn newspapers around. They're dead. They're dying. And it's time to finish them off, says Downie to the cheering University of Kentucky students.Here's the future, kids:These ex-reporters, burned by their newspapers but committed to their craft and street-reporter tough, are beginning to realize that the world is ready for online-only newspapers. That's what the blogs are telling us.It'll be difficult for them, but good reporters are resourceful, good reporters like to compete, to win, and good reporters don't quit on the story or life. They don't get beat, is what they do.And the chains have been beating these newspaper reporters for too long. It's time to fight back in the only arena they understand: as competitors.One town at a time.Downie looks hard at the Kentucky students and says:If you take a job with a crappy newspaper just to get one, then realize it's not your future. Learn what you can, and if local journalism is what you want, then start your own online newspaper or write for one formed by an ex-reporter or editor.The enemies of the chains are grouping now, and there's going to be hell to pay when the street reporters, those tough men and women who have faced threats, dangers, and emotions roiled hard by the things they have covered, turn their anger on this business and rebuild it, from the street, from the underworld they know.Of course, instead of doing that, we can all whine about how newspapers need to hire more reporters.Shut up. I mean it. It's not going to happen. Just shut up. Sci/Tech28548@blogcritics.org Sat, 23 Apr 2005 13:41:01 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/16/091636.php KOBIf you are thinking of reading Shark's post, "Beating a Dead Donkey: The Relentless Right," I'm an editor and I'm here to help. Through the miracle of editing, I've reduced this 6,750-word thread to a mere 177 words.Why?The average reading speed is somewhere between 200 to 350 words per minute. Using the high-end of the average reading speed, it would take roughly about 19 minutes to read this thread. Add in coffee and bathroom breaks and you're looking at 30-plus minutes of your precious weekend time.This concerns me. But now you can read this entire post in less than a minute. Read this thread and have a life, too?Priceless. The edited thread: garrulous Right-Wing Boyz family-values fascists creationist creeps corporate whores pit-bull pork-barrel managers flag-wavin' right-wing Christian SUV drivin' ... cell-phone squawkin' little bride ANGRY LEFTIST STALINIST have to destroy themselves first extermination would be a blessing righist boogeymen despise the Neocons ideological zombie abandonned reason hammering away I'm a pedantic blowhard and I know it Polly wanna cracker... hoity-fuckin' toity intellectual philanthropist Evil Incarnate the dreaded "liberals" Big baby poor little pussy liberals black boot/nazi/gestapo imagery hypocritical comment all-enveloping warmness of ideological delusion. personal political too contentious ain't flowery language grand endless right wing dogma you sure are arrogant we're supposed to respect your opinions condescending forever Is this intentional irony guesswork and over-generalizations. wish we saw more policy posts here from the left extremely irritating more nuanced gagging down chickenshit generalizations mean-spirited some of us aren't fooled constant abuse fix me a sandwich dead donkey kicks emotionally driven outrageous statements rant and blather laughed fun, charitable, loving, optimistic utterly exacerbated My belly's rumbling original rant I'd serve you poison old horseshoer dead air yard name calling something higher Politics28223@blogcritics.org Sat, 16 Apr 2005 09:16:36 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/13/195901.php KOBA stark warning about the future of newspapers and the importance of blogs was delivered today by Rupert Murdoch at the National Press Club in Washington, Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine reports. He includes the speech text with his own comments. Another very good Jarvis post concerns news aggregation. He writes:"Why depend on the 300 (expensive, snarky, recalcitrant) reporters you pay for when you could have 3,000 aggregated reporters to get more news less expensively than ever before."On the subject of news aggregators, Rick Edmonds, in a review published on Poynteronline.com of two books about the news business, asks these questions:"Is the blogosphere the leading edge of a mass exodus to reading news online and in non-traditional formats? Are news-aggregators poised to strip-mine expensive-to-produce content out of economically challenged papers?"Newspaper were cutting staff well before blogs. And blogs that exist by cut and pasting content from other sources aren't the future. Blogs will compete to survive and they'll have to generate original content to do so.Blogs aren't a threat. They're the first true sign that news organizations - on a wide scale - can exist without newsprint.Newspapers need to dump their printed product and invest the savings in newsgathering. We need to get past the bathroom reading habit argument. New trend in publishing: Hiring instead of firing reporters?It may be cheaper for a newspaper to deliver free computers to subscribers then hard copies to subscribers. Other items of note from the despair editor:The Boston Herald is cutting 35 positions, Editor & Publisher reports. E&P also has an AP story about how the top editor of The Free Press in Mankato, Minn., resigned rather than cut newsroom jobs. The Free Press has 30 staff members; management apparently believes industry standards call for one employee for every 1,000 subscribers. Its daily circulation is 22,500, AP reports. We predict a decline.The Seattle Times has a goodbye party to 27 newsroom staffers who took voluntary severance. Times editor writes of the "pain." Hold that thought. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, reporters and editors at the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph vote to strike to "protest at the loss of nearly one in six jobs at the newspapers," PersonnelToday.com reports.In grim summary:The American Society of Newspaper Editors reported this week that: "Since the economic downturn of 2001, newsrooms have lost a net of more than 2,200 journalists ...."Meanwhile, are the number of PR flacks increasing while jorno jobs die? Any stats? And that's the news from your Despair Editor.-- Courage. Culture28135@blogcritics.org Wed, 13 Apr 2005 19:59:01 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/04/09/112832.php KOBThe blog world needs reality checking and it can start by answering this question: Does anyone know how many people stopped blogging today? The Pew Internet & American Life Project's "The state of blogging" data released in January, doesn't tell us that. Data posted by BlogPulse and Technorati, is similarly incomplete. Pew claims "that 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use the Internet say they have created a blog or Web-based diary. That represents more than 8 million people."Technorati reports number of blogs watched, more than 8.5 million, and BlogPulse puts the total number of identified blogs at 9.7 million, as well as new blogs created in any given 24 hours period (usually somewhere between 20,000 to 40,000). I'm not disputing the accuracy of the numbers assembled by BlogPulse and Technorati and posted on their homepages or the Pew report, just their usefulness in assessing the state of blogs. It's a general point: Growth numbers tell a small part of the story. A company can report revenue growth and still have a net loss. The hype about blogs, inadvertently or otherwise, is helped by these estimates. For instance, many media outlets this week carried reports on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's report, "How to Blog Safely" , citing these stats to illustrate the popularity of blogging. See this CNN story, for instance. A lot of people blog, that's for certain. A lot of people have also created newsgroups, mailing lists and Web sites, but there are many inactive newsgroups, mailing lists and Web sites. Check your own "blog roll" -- how many links are still active? What's the likelihood that a blog that hasn't been updated in 30, 60 or 90 days will ever be updated? How many of the new blogs created are junk blogs, designed to optimize search engine results by repetitive use of certain words?How many blog creators have developed multiple blogs? Or created one blog, but moved on to another? The U.S. election fueled a lot of interest in blogs, and it's argued that blogs will have considerable influence in many other areas and markets. Some blogs will thrive as businesses. Blog networks have already started to emerge and others may follow. But how many people will move on, end their blogs, after realizing it's not for them or it just takes too much time? I don't have a clue what the impact of blogs will be. But I do know that anyone who writes a story about blogs that says 40,000 blogs were created today, without knowing how many also died today, doesn't have a clue either. Culture27940@blogcritics.org Sat, 9 Apr 2005 11:28:32 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/20/113711.php KOB 26996@blogcritics.org Sun, 20 Mar 2005 11:37:11 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/03/13/113211.php KOBIf my blog were a dog, I would call it, "BadBloggy.com" (That's available for registration.)It takes time and makes a mess of my day. (PuddleBlog.com is available)And sometimes I have to go to fix typos, (BloggingAccident.com is available), as well as the HTML code. (VetTripBlog.com is available) It's hard getting traffic, and my ads pay me not. (PlayDeadBlog.com is available)Sometimes I just want to give up. (RolloverBlog.com is available)Coming up with ideas isn't always easy, and it takes a lot of thought. (ChewBlog.com is available)But my blog is my voice. (BarkBlog.com is available)I try to treat it well. (PetMeBlog.com is available) In the end, I like my blog even if the best it can fetch is 10 page views all day. (BestFriendBlog.com is available) Culture26668@blogcritics.org Sun, 13 Mar 2005 11:32:11 EST