To Journalists
Written byPosted on January 31, 2006
Filed Under Blogging, Journalism
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.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
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