Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
In <123> I mentioned the International Symposium on Online
Journalism, but I failed to mention that there's a virtual
participation option for $25 (that's early bird cost - increases to
$30 tomorrow). <https://isoj.org/>

Registration is at
<https://cvent.utexas.edu/event/20ec90ec-ed20-4cfb-9640-4b97dc9b0a51/regProcess
Step1>
  

    
>blaming the mainstream media

The mainstream media *is* to blame.

>quitting implies that the problem is hopeless corruption

That *is* the problem. 95% of media properties, from left to right,
from shit to shinola, are controlled by a handful of corporate
interests. The industry as a whole is an unelected elite exercising
enormous influence, enjoying extraordinary constitutional
protections, and accountable solely to capital. The Times, in
particular, is the chronicle of the ownership class, and cynically
champions its interests and priorities. It isn't in competition with
Gannett for the middlebrow mind; it's competing with the WSJ for
high net worth eyeballs.

>stay, criticize, and demand better

Attention, we profess (per Ronald Heifetz), is the currency. In the
marketplace for anything, when a supplier consistently fails to
deliver value for money (or attention), you don't stick with them;
you seek a more responsive, more intrepid supplier. That's the only
critique the suits can quantify and respond to. We banished the
Times from our media diet years ago chez nous, and are fitter
citizens for it. The Post is hanging by a thread, as well. If you
continually piss on my leg and tell me it's raining, you forfeit
credibility and lose wallet share. And you deserve to.

The information-as-a-public-good industry as a whole faces serious
structural challenges in the confirmation-bias-on-demand era, but
they are not made more manageable by sacrificing reliability on the
altar of private equity in exchange for patronage from privilege.

>I'd like to see them continue to make better choices.

As would I. If they do so, they will earn my resumed attention. In
the meantime, sources of more reliable and less biased journalism
offer compelling demands on my consideration, and there are only so
many hours in a news cycle.
  

    

It's the horse race versus the stakes. And goddammit, the horse race is ahead
by a dozen lengths.
  

    

GO AXON!!
  

    

and thanks Matisse for the micropayment explanation
  

    

nice rant, axon!

have we talked in here, yet, about how Search figures in?

i remember a time when my search engine results pages (SERPs) from Google
were pretty useful. though i understood and somewhat resented the
implications for privacy, political divisiveness, etc., it was clear that
because Google "knew" me, it was providing me with appropriate search
results.

am i going to click on "Obama's Birth Certificate: Truly Fake?" on
weirdunknownwebsite.com , even if it's the first result? no. Google knows
me better than that. Google's going to give me something from Harvard,
something from the NYTimes or SF Gate, etc.

then that stopped. whether i'm logged in or not, Google feeds me content
mill sites as most of my first page of SERPs. i was unable to find the
artcle detailing how Google crossed over, from keeping its advertising and
search divisions separate, to ensuring that advertisers ranked higher on
SERPs -- not just in the advertisements displayed, but in all content, all
results being displayed.

like i said, real news outlets rarely appear on that first page, if at all.
it looks to me like Google is trying to starve out the legitimate news
organizations, instead of sticking to its previous plans (steal the content
created by real news organizations, reveal pertinent information as
"snippets" in SERPs and in other ways; provide no compensation to the news
orgs for helpfully snagging their content). 

is this intentional?
is it stupid? (if there is no one left to report the news, what will you
feed the roaming Internet users who are browsing around looking for a news
snack?)
are news orgs responding appropriately to this threat?

interesting blog post on SEO basics:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo/seo-history/
  

    
>Micropayments involves having a secure way to move currency between
these
systems as very high volume and very low cost per transaction. It is
an
entirely new type of infrastructure still very much in its infancy.

Don't banks already have this kind of infrastructure within their
own institutions and in bank-to-bank transactions?
  

    
Should also be possible to 'batch' these transactions. Sending a
penny transaction might be cost-prohibitive, but sending a day's
worth might not be. And one way to do it might involve a browser
getting preloaded with a certain amount of verified cash.. but
that's speculating about infrastructure. 

I *would* like to see the NYTimes and other papers stop pulling
their punches on Trump. 
  

    
Support for micropayments needs to handle payments that are at least
three orders of magnitude smaller than bank payments, at speeds that
are five orders of magnitude as fast. Phone company billing
infrastructure is closer to what's needed. The billing
infrastructure for ads on the web is even closer. It counts user
clicks on ads and assigns a payment based on each click, thousands
of times a second.

<betsys>, the batch of data for a day's worth of transactions would
be very large. The software would have to process transactions for
many users, many publishers, and many different prices based on what
property was read, just as web ads are handled. There's a lot of
work to do whether it's done on a data stream or on a batch.
  

    

the last 4 posters are going to pay a penalty for not watching the
Super Bowl.
  

    
I would expect to see a trusted third party clearinghouse vendor
that would simply validate the good standing of the user as they
access the content, incrementing the user account by the agreed upon
tariff per transaction, debiting the user's payment method monthly,
and settling outstanding balances with providers overnight. The
clearinghouse could either scrape the tariff for profit margin, or
charge a monthly service fee, likely tiered for varying levels of
usage. Or both, of course.
  

    
>not watching the Super Bowl

Not too hard to compare and keep track of the game. KC's D is
running out of steam.
  

    
compare s/b compose...
  

    

Axon, we disagree. I think the media still needs to learn a lot about
countering disinformation and dealing with crazy-ass, evil politicians. But
the idea that they are on the team for Trump because of their owners or
investors goes against every experience I ever had in nearly 40 years in
newsrooms.

  By the way, the NYT homepage at the moment has three stories at the top on
Trump's vile NATO comments.

  But if you've dropped the NYT from your media diet, you probably won't see
that or know about it. You'll only hear about the things that the Times has
done that pisses the people in your social networks off.
  

    
Good for them for doing the right thing. The thing they should be
doing every day.
  

    
>the idea that they are on the team for Trump

I don't think they are. I think that they are biased for the
interests of Capital, which only tangentially intersect with the
interests of Trump. I think they are biased against the ambitions of
reformers generally, liberals as a class, and Joe Biden specifically
this cycle, because they pose a persistent threat to the interests
of Capital, and I think that bias is evident in their work product.

Moreover, I think that's the case with the industry as a whole,
notwithstanding the hard work and dedication of the many gifted
front line journalists who gather the grist for the mill, but I
seriously doubt there is an EIC in the business without one foot on
the wrong side of the Chinese Wall. The result at the end of each
news cycle, the aggregate deliverable, has a hundreds of tiny
microthumbs on dozens of microgram scales incrementally nudging a
consensus narrative favorable to its continuing influence in public
affairs and to the stakeholders in the economic system whereby it
prospers. It uses bothsidesism to feign a simulacrum of objectivity,
while keeping a steady hand on the tiller.

Attention may be the currency, but semiotics is the commodity
traded. We subscribe to a particular media property not because it
agrees with us, but so we can belong to its tribe. I have a tribe of
my own devising.

One of the reasons I signed up for Twitter when it first opened its
doors, and why I still check in with it pretty much daily, is so I
can follow front line reporters in whom I have confidence. I don't
have to join their tribe, and if that confidence wanes, unfollowing
them is trivial. I do value the folks who toil in the vineyard, and
appreciate their observations, when they have the freedom to share
them candidly. But I have no confidence in what happens to their
work once it enters the editorial samsara prior to press or air.

I harbor this prejudice no less fervently for properties professing
nominally liberal, progressive, or left wing perspectives. They are,
like all the other properties in the mediascape, captived by the
priorities of the Ruling Class, FDIC. If consensual self government
is to be hung and buried, it is the news media who will cheerfully
supply the shovels and rope.

A free press is the fulcrum of liberty. We really ought to get us
one of those. What we have here is a fee press.
  

    
Right on. Power to the people!

As long as those filthy capitalist running dogs control the means of
production, the people will never be free.
  

    
It's very plausible and might even be true, unlike your cliche.
  

    
No, it's not true, or anything close to true. It's a cynical,
anti-capitalist conspiracy theory that not only betrays a
fundamental lack of knowledge of how a serious, professional news
organization is run, but of human nature itself.

But that's just my opinion. Maybe the entire profession is utterly
corrupt. Who knows?
  

    
Much as I respect <axon>'s analysis I at times suspect that
generating fear as a method of keeping readers engaged is simple
enough motivation for news organizations. It feels like a game of
chicken with the NYT, in this case titrating the bad news about
Biden against the good sense of the American voters. 
  

    

well,there's no conspiracy theory at the heart of economic reality. late
capitalism may suck, but it is not some fringe conspiracy concept. it's all
right in front of us for us to see, comprehend, and respond to.

i'm not talking "does the NYT cover Trump too much" -- though, yes, i
believe it does, and i place my little subscriber vote by rarely clicking
through on any item containing the word Trump in the headline (you can bet
your pointy little head AND your orange fake tan that NYT is keeping track
of that kind of clickthrough, as they experiment with different headlines
throughout the life of an article online).

i'm talking good old-fashioned marketing, and bad new-fashioned marketing
to go along with it. like many people who love and practice journalism and
creative writing, i make most of my living working on other things, things
that pay well even for freelancers. things like... marketing. web content.
egad.

yes, there are "real" and sincere, hard-working journalists out there,
mostly on staff at those very few remaining serious news organizations
we've been discussing here. the assignments they receive are based in part
(a large part) on whether the publication in question can afford to cover
that item, and what the ROI will be on it. (Return On Investment.) their
opinion pieces, fluff, lifestyle coverage, and sports will largely be
determined by the cost of the story -- cheaper, ain't it, to write about
fashion than to report an investigative piece? -- and by clickthroughs and
engagement. if no one engages, did the tree fall in the forest? well, who
cares. engagement sells. it sells ads and it sells digital subscriptions.

so i think axon has it right in some ways. significant ways. ignoring his
comments or assuming they are fringe, inaccurate, inconceivable, would be a
mistake. the pride and arrogance of journalism, the conviction that
journalism is great and surely everyone can see its greatness -- that's
contributed to the fall of our former news industry. for every 100 of us
that are passionate enough about journalism in its various forms to work
for shitty wages when we could be making bank doing something else with our
formidable critical thinking skills there are 900 regular Americans going,
"there's something fishy about the news media." and it's not all Rupert
Murdoch's fault, nor Bannon's. it's also ours.
  

    

I agree overall with axon's analysis, but I think his and my views
on why things are this way differ significantly.

What I think is that living in capitalism unconsciously affect
journalists' choices in what gets reported, how it gets edited, what
questions we ask, and, often, how well our audiences understand the
stakes of a given situation. 

I encounter this mindset all the time in myself, such as when I ask
a reporter to please add (and why didn't you include it in the FIRST
draft, dammit?) what the projected cost is of building this pipeline
or that LNG plant, or properly shutting down State X's gajillion
abandoned oil and gas wells in the Permian Basin, or taking care of
millions of children in the ER with asthma attacks, and the
estimated lost work hours for their parent or caregivers. 

Dollar figures help convey to readers what the scale of the project
or problem is - full stop. Also, in the USA - on many beats, the
dollar terms are often an intrinsic part of the story. 

Most middle-of-the -road outlets - the scale might be (from L to R,
for lack of a better concept) from The Guardian to The NYT to The NY
Post - do not privilege costs over benefits. Which is to say, they
report from the POV that society should not hurt people just because
it's cheaper than keeping them safe and healthy. But cost/benefit
analysis is baked into capitalism, and we are baking in capitalism,
too - figuratively and literally.

For my part, I think that omitting all capitalist values in the
journalism I produce risks irrelevancy. I just try to be awake about
how I do it and why.

On another topic: Tiff, I read fashion reporting! How people present
themselves to the world, and why, is a fascinating topic, One of the
most memorable articles I've ever read is Robin Givens's analysis of
the silk scarves Marie Yovanovitch wore to her appearances before
Congress: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/11/15/marie-yovanovitchs-eagles-
sabers-glittering-flag-spoke-before-her-testimony-began/
  

    
Claire Malone has a long piece about the current state of media in
The New Yorker that might be interesting to some here. She doesn't
present any single solution, offers several avenues, and of course
the Times is prominent in her piece as it is here. She attributes
its success to turning itself into a lifestyle publication

Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/is-the-media-prepared-for-an-
extinction-level-event
  

    
Regarding how most large, mainstream outlets are covering the
presidential election: I am among the dismayed. 

Yet at the same time, since the reckonings of 2016 and 2020, there
are a lot of news outlets and projects trying to do things
differently and better, both inside their own offices and in how
they report the news. Some of them have been mentioned during this
discussion. I work with some of these people.

Pointing that out is not my attempt to apologize for all of
journalism and its errors. It's my attempt to point out that there
ARE others things we can talk about, when we choose to.
  

    
In my experience, most editors in chief are firmly on the right side
of the supposed Wall between editorial and the business folks. More
than used to be. 
At the Post, for instance, Ben Bradlee was famously friendly with
JFK and other politicians (way more than with corporate titans). His
successor, Leonard Downie, managing editor and then editor, famously
never even registered to vote, because that was public information
and he thought readers and the public would think the Post's
coverage biased if they knew he was an R, a D or even an I.

I find that extreme -- reporters remain citizens, and even if they
get bounced for taking public positions (as a NYT writer was a few
months back for signing a public statement on Gaza) and are
forbidden to make campaign contributions, they should still be able
to vote, at the least. 

Downie's successors, editors at the other major broadcast and print
outlets, are pretty scrupulous about what they do and say, on the
theory that the appearance of impropriety is as damning as
impropriety itself.

I'll reject that particular part of Axon's analysis.