I can understand a newsppaer’s authoritarian impulse. But it seems that preventing a substantial bloc of people from accessing content is a sure path to extinction. In other words, if they can’t find the story at your newspaper, they’ll go somewhere else. Or worse: they’ll do your work for you, perhaps beating you to the punch. It was proven the other day by Jason Kottke that the New York Times‘ forced registration is having a serious effect upon its Google search engine results.
Note to newspaper editors: You want to win this war? Stop declaring this a war. It is no longer 1996. It is 2006. The playing field is level. The Internet is an undeniable fact. People click on links, comment upon posts, print things off, and send things to other people.
Pop quiz, hotshot: Who broke the James Frey story? The Internet or a newspaper?
Learn to accept the fact that bloggers are linking to your content. Learn to accept the fact that bloggers may not always be as accurate as you, but that they are faster than you and, in the best of cases, they are quick to correct their mistakes and offer multiple perspectives to a story. Learn to work with them. Credit them when they have the facts before you and they’ll do likewise. Make your content available to as many people as possible. Invite commenting and, if you are truly concerned with “family values,” hire someone to monitor the comments.
Of course, you can also live in your lofty castles and pretend we don’t exist. That’s fine. But you know what John Donne said about solipsism. And when the axe falls and you lose your jobs, we’ll be there communicating with the audience that you talked down to. All because you thought that you were the authoritarian voice and that they’d still listen to you no matter what you said. Well, if you want to play that way, you’d better be on your game. Because there will be a thousand bloggers there before you. And if even a soupcon of these are good, you’re going to be in serious trouble.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
I’m still pissed that I can’t read Paul Krugman for free anymore. Hey, NYT, Krugman’s still the best thing you have going for you, so stick a 30-second ad in there first, and I’ll gladly sit through it.
Hi there,
Any interest in receiving copies of new non-fiction, i.e. The Judgment of Paris by Ross King
http://www.walkerbooks.com/books/catalog.php?key=539
??? Looking to add you to my reviewers list…comments? LJ