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by Sheila
Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
June
21, 2002 • Last
week's weblog
Summer!
(BBC has pix
and links from Stonehenge, where it rained at dawn.)
June 20,
2002
Byline
strike (It's a movement!) : Some Providence Journal/projo.com
stories lack bylines today as members of the Providence Newspaper Guild
withhold their names from their stories to protest lack of a contract
since Dec. 31, 1999. (Stories may be bylined "Journal Staff Writer.")
The Washington Post is also
currently publishing under a byline strike "until further notice"
(Don't
Write for Web, Post Reporters Urged).
Cluetrain
Manifesto co-author Doc
Searls had never heard of a byline strike; Jenny The
Shifted Librarian is interested. And now Dave
Hyndman is blogging Canadian
byline strikes:
"On
Tuesday, articles and photos by members of the Ottawa Newspaper Guild
began appearing in the Ottawa Citizen without the names of staffers...
to protest the firing earlier this week of Ottawa Citizen publisher
Russell Mills by CanWest Global Communications... Mills has said he
was fired for publishing an article that investigated Prime Minister
Jean Chretien and an editorial that called for Chretien to resign. "
In his e-Journal,
Dan
Gillmor (San Jose, Calif., Mercury News / SiliconValley.com) blogs
a headline that's probably never been written before: Byline
Strike Covered by Blog. Jim
Romanesko's Media News is pointing here today, too. Very cool.
And now Cory
Doctorow of EFF and BoingBoing
is explaining
byline strikes. And curmudgeon Dave
Copeland, a business reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, shows
up, too.
We ink-stained
wretches have seldom been in finer company.
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2wice-told
stories: Travelers
Diagram, which blogs "art, music and other miracles of creation,"
often rescues me from the burn of life lived largely in the left brain.
TD does it again today, pointing to a stunning 1967 photo of a man wearing
a TV
Helmet (Portable Living Room) by Walter Pichle at 2wice.org.
Click around the links below this photo for more gems. 2wice is also a
semi-annual interdisciplinary arts
journal published by the 2wice Arts Foundation, Inc., whose advisory
board includes Twyla Tharp and Merce Cunningham.
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Tangled
up in cats: Bob Higgins at the Seattle Times writes to point out that
Monday's "meow"parody is not a knockoff
of Cat Stevens but rather of Cat's in the Cradle by Harry Chapin.
I'm tripping over cats, as usual. Look
and listen.
June 19,
2002
Webby
Awards: Judged Winners and People's Voice Award winners are here;
winners and nominees are here.
(Entry fees of $85-$100 per site are required to be entered for judging;
the public votes for its favorite Web sites as write-ins for the People's
Voice Awards.) Related: Webbys
not what they used to be. SF Gate documents the downsizing.
"Audiogalaxy
Makes Pact with the Devil": Will Bryant at Pitchfork
Newswire reports, "In an absolutely stunning and unprecedented
move in the world of peer-to-peer file-sharing, Audiogalaxy
yesterday adopted a 'filter-in' system which requires not only the songwriter,
but the music publisher and record company to all provide permission before
allowing Audiogalaxy users to swap files. The new system was implemented
as part of a settlement
with the industry-funded Recording Industry Association of America,
which sued Audiogalaxy last month and has pending litigation against file-sharing
services Kazaa, Morpheus, and Madster. ...Audiogalaxy users were greeted
yesterday by a field of "X"s (the icon signifying a blocked
file) for every search, and it is unclear how many artists and labels
will provide Audiogalaxy with the documentation necessary to unblock their
albums or files."
Ebert
interviews Spielberg and Cruise: Minority Report:
"Remarkable, that in the same week when the White House shuffled
agencies into a new Department of Homeland Security, Minority Report
is about a Department of Pre-Crime in the District of Columbia. Fifty
years in the future, three "Pre-Cogs," people with the ability
to foresee the future, float in a tank with their brains wired to computer,
predicting crimes before they happen."
Here's
an update on hospitalized Dave (Winer),
from his friend and employee at Radio
UserLand, John
Robb: "He just gave me a call. He sounds great but hoarse. Very
upbeat. He was overwhelmed by the wonderful outpouring of support for
his recovery. I expect that he will be back online this weekend."
For those of you don't know who Dave is, here's a link about his hippie
uncle Ken in Jamaica, The
Great Va-Va-Voom and another that starts off about the uncle but turns
into vintage Dave.
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There
goes the mystery:
After 28 years as New Age Journal, the magazine has renamed itself Body
& Soul. Jenny Cook, editor in chief, told Media
Life (Body
& Soul, yoga w/o the yoyos: Name
change to shake off fringier associations) that ..."towards the
end of the 20th century and into the 21st century it (the old title) gained
more negative connotations. 'New Age' took on things further out on the
spectrum, like crystal gazing, that the magazine was never about."
Huh? New
Age has always meant modern mysticism -- divination, alternative medicine,
etc. Body & Soul's spirituality section comprises a single interview,
"Why Meditate"; its organic living section's "33 easy ways
to fit green living into your life" begins, "Turn off the faucet
while you’re brushing your teeth in the morning..."
Maybe it's
easier for advertisers to sell products for The Age of The Body -- "crystal-gazing"
doesn't require much in the way of equipment, once you've got the ball.
The change
has not yet been made at the New
Age section of Magatopia, whick links to free online magazines.
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June 17,
2002
John
Dean's Deep Throat candidates:
"Dean's 158-page e-book lists five people who may have been who fed
key information to Woodward and Bernstein. That list includes former
Nixon aide Pat Buchanan; Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler; Jerry Warren,
Zeigler's assistant; Steve Bull, an assistant to Nixon's appointment
secretary Dwight Chapin; and Raymond Price, a special assistant to Nixon.
" For $8 you can read the story at Salon.
Pat Buchanan seems to lead Dean's list, and that of SPIKE,
the student magazine of the University of Illinois Department of Journalism.
Is Deep
Throat a potted plant? Why doesn't Deep Throat step forward himself?
(Bob Woodward says his source is a man, and he will reveal Deep Throat's
identity only after the source is dead because, if he did it sooner, sources
he deals with today might question whether he can keep a confidence.)
What harm
could come to Throat now, 30 years later? Who might not want the wealth,
fame and chance to tell their own version to history?
1. A journalist,
maybe, who'd find the moniker a distraction: AP
reported, "Monica Crowley, a young aide to the former president
for four years before his death in 1994, quoted Nixon as saying Deep
Throat was "someone on the inside.... One person who thought he had
a lot to gain by spilling his guts to those two guys," Nixon also said,
"someone who wanted to be seen as a liberal because he wanted "a media
career."
Santa Rosa
(Dalif.) Democrat columnist Chris Coursey last month wrote ('Deep
Throat' mystery points to SR man) about another man Richard Nixon
thought was Deep Throat, Mark Felt, ("The number-three man in the FBI
when J. Edgar Hoover died in May 1972, he wrote that he hoped Nixon would
appoint him to replace the director. Instead, Nixon picked an outsider,
L. Patrick Gray, who directed the bureau as the Watergate investigation
unfolded. Almost immediately, someone close to the investigation began
talking to Woodward.") Felt has issued repeated denials, claiming that
no one person knew all of the information that "Deep Throat" purportedly
leaked.
"Some information
appeared to come from the White House, some from the FBI, some from the
Committee to Re-elect the President, known as CREEP or CRP," John Dean,
White House counsel to Richard Nixon, tells Salon managing editor Scott
Rosenberg.
2. Someone
who was intimate with people in all these high places might know all
this information. Does someone not wish a sexual past to surface now
in answer to, "How did you find out all this stuff?"
Woodward
once said, years after Watergate, that Throat did not want the hassle
of being known as a whistleblower. Maybe then, but this is the age of
the whistleblower, from Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts played her) to
Enron Vice President for Corporate Development Sherron
Watkins (Time magazine's Person of the Week Jan. 18) to FBI agent
Coleen Rowley (Newsday, Spotlight
on Faces of Courage). They're all women, aren't they...
Could Woodward
be claiming it's a man because it's the only way to protect the only woman
on the list of "suspects," journalist Diane Sawyer?
Rabbi Baruch
Korff, dying in Providence in 1995 of pancreatic cancer, said Sawyer was
Deep Throat. Sawyer was an assistant to presidential press secretary Ron
Ziegler during the Watergate years, when Rabbi Korff made periodic visits
to the Nixon White House. Korff said she had a "special relationship"
with Ziegler.
On Nov. 28,
1995 the Providence Journal published a story by reporter Jody McPhillips,
who interviewed Korff at his East Side home after he dropped his bombshell:
Rabbi Baruch
Korff, propped up on four pillows and beaming into the cameras, stuck
to his guns yesterday: Diane Sawyer, ABC's glamorous blond newshound,
was "Deep Throat," the anonymous source who helped The Washington
Post uncover the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.
Rabbi Korff
said as much to several TV crews over the weekend, and the phones have
been ringing off the walls in his East Side home ever since...
...Yesterday
he could offer no hard evidence to support his contention that Sawyer
was Deep Throat. So what does he base it on? "The manner in which
she carried herself," he said. "The young lady was far too
self-assured . . . to be anything else."
Calls to
Sawyer yesterday were fielded by Leslie Sherrill, an ABC News publicist.
"She says it's just hilarious," said Sherrill, who did not
sound all that amused. "It's providing a lot of laughs and entertainment.
Obviously, there's nothing to it."
Bob Woodward,
believed to be the only person who knows who Deep Throat is [Editor's
note: Post editor Ben Bradlee is now known to be privy to the secret],
did not return phone calls yesterday. Woodward, now an assistant managing
editor at the Washington Post, gave the Associated Press the kind of
quote conspiracists can feed on for years:
"For
20 years we've always said that the source 'Deep Throat' was a man.
There is no evidence that Diane Sawyer in her kind of subsidiary role
in the Nixon White House would have that kind of knowledge."
The person
who was Deep Throat had to know two things: what happened during the
Watergate break-in and what happened during the ensuing cover-up. Darrell
West, Brown University political scientist and pollster, said, "The
press secretary's office was a pretty interesting place to be, because
people in the press office have the opportunity to ask a lot of questions.
If you read All the President's Men carefully, the range of Deep
Throat's information was very impressive. It was unlikely anyone sitting
in one office would know all that."
West reread
the book, by Woodward and former partner Carl Bernstein, a few months
ago, when Rabbi Korff first mentioned the Diane theory to him. He says
Deep Throat is described as modest, unable to conceal feelings, dependable,
well read, frightened and losing weight.
Whoa. Can you picture Alexander Haig whining about his weight?"
...And
once before, said West, Rabbi Korff knew what he was talking about:
when he gave the Journal-Bulletin a national scoop on Nixon's plans
in 1974. "The rabbi broke the last big story, about Nixon resigning."
Who smoked
cigarettes, drank Scotch, did a mean impression of Nixon spokesman Ron
Ziegler, and might arrange 2 a.m. meetings in a parking garage?
3. Maybe
Deep Throat has written a book to be published posthumously, and likes
his/her life as it is.
Maybe someday
at a funeral, Bob Woodward will join those recounting memories of the
deceased, saying, "The truth of X's life can finally be told. X was
Deep Throat."
But what
if Woodward dies first?
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Cover
yourself: Sunday's Providence Journal reconstructs what's known about
the shooting spree that left two Journal employees dead and one wounded
before shooter Carlos Pacheco burned himself up in his car: Disputes,
odd behavior marked gunman's final days. Background: At
Editor & Publisher, Joe Strupp covers the coverage:Traumatic
Week For 'Providence Journal'; Mgmt. Defends Shooting Coverage.
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A big
voice goes down: Dave Winer, RadioUserland
blogtool author, Web evangelist and nearly 24/7 blogger, is in the hospital
and will remain there till next weekend, says
John Robb. The "comments" link on Robb's post is turning
into a huge "Get well" card. Dave's last message Friday was,
"It's going to be a light day here on Scripting News. Lots of non-Internet
stuff going on." He wasn't kidding.
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What
is a "MEETUP"?
"It's
a local gathering of a group of people brought together by a common
interest. Real world, face-to-face -- over coffee, over a beer maybe.
MEETUPs are like book clubs, activist groups, shareholder meetings,
user groups, fan clubs, car clubs, support groups, or study groups.
All in local communities. Show off your dog, your car, or your handiwork.
Maybe play a game, talk about the game, trade kitchen renovation tips,
or mobilize for a cause. Or just shoot the breeze. This website arranges
meetups around hundreds of topics, everywhere."
It's free
(for now, anyway), backed by some
Web heavies, and there's a MEETUP for Rhode island webloggers tentatively
planned for July 18. Place to be arranged by those planning to attend.
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All we
are saying...: The Guardian (U.K.) publishes, "We
won't deny our consciences: Prominent Americans have issued this statement
on the war on terror."
They call it the Pledge of Resistance. It begins: "Let it not be
said that people in the United States did nothing when their government
declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression.
The signers of this statement call on the people of the US to resist the
policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September
11 and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world..."
It's all
got a familiar feel to those who remember the '60s, and some of the signers'
names are familiar from the Vietnam era as well. Among the signers are
Staughton Lynd; Casey Kasem; Martin Luther King III; Grace Paley; Boots
Riley of the hip hop band The Coup; Gloria Steinem; Alice Walker; Leonard
Weinglass and Howard Zinn.
BBC
reported, "The organiser of an artists' petition against the
US Government's "war on terror" has said some people were afraid
to add their signatures. But organiser Jeremy Pikser, who wrote the screen
play of the Warren Beatty film Bulworth, told the Guardian newspaper
on Thursday some people held back from signing the petition. He
said they would not sign "because they think it might jeopardise
other things they're involved in".
"The
statement comes from a coalition called The Artists'
Network of Refuse And Resist. Its website names figures who did not
sign the 2 June statement, including Susan Sontag, Danny Glover, Angelina
Jolie and Robert Altman."
("An' here
I sit so patiently waiting to find out what price you have to pay to get
out of going through all these things twice." Dylan
said that.)
Background
on the petition is at the Not in Our Name site at notinourname.net.
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Grasping
at (used) straws: Royalties
proposed for booming used market as new-CD sales stagnate. Will someone
please give the music industry a revenue stream -- audio porn, maybe.
Now they want a piece of each used CD transaction. Maybe RIAA will come
to your yard sale!
(Imagine
how profitable lemons would be if the auto industry participated in such
a scheme: The worst cars would be the most profitable, as multiple owners
got rid of them.)
$18 CDs don't
sell? Lower your prices. "In the end, less than 10% (of CDs) are profitable,
and in effect, it's these recordings that finance all the rest," RIAA
explains. Sounds like, "We no longer have a clue what music will grab
listeners' hearts and ears, so you'll pay through the nose if you actually
buy anything."
Dave
Winer wrote last month, 'Perhaps monoculture has run its course. Maybe
what's happening now, but it's hard to see, is that each of us is taking
more responsibility for getting our own information, for creating our
own entertainment, and not giving that power to the centralized entertainment
and information industries."
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Pump up
the neurons: Musicians
found to have 'more sensitive brains'
Professional musicians have the largest auditory brain centers:
"The auditory cortex, which is the part of the brain concerned with
hearing, contains 130 per cent more 'grey matter' in professional musicians
than in non-musicians. In amateur players, the volume of the auditory
cortex is between the two, a team of researchers from Heidelberg University
in Germany has found. They used scans and imaging techniques to compare
the size and activity of the auditory cortex in 37 people. "The question
remains, however, whether early exposure to music or a genetic predisposition
leads to the functional and anatomical differences between musicians and
non-musicians," said the report's lead author, Peter Schneider of
Germany's Heidelberg University.
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Top 10
CEOs paid an average of $154 million in 2000: A chart in Kevin Phillips'
new book, Wealth
and Democracy, shows that, since 1981, "...wages of ordinary
workers roughly doubled over the same period, though the bulk of that
gain was eaten up by inflation. But earnings of top executives rose 4,300
percent."
Paul
Krugman, writing
in the New York Times, asks, "How will this imbalance be resolved?
The economists Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo have dubbed the narrowing
of income gaps that took place under F.D.R. the "Great Compression"; if
I read Mr. Phillips right, he thinks something like that will happen again.
But he also offers a bleak alternative: "Either democracy must be renewed,
with politics brought back to life, or wealth is likely to cement a new
and less democratic regime - plutocracy by some other name."
Is there
a finite amount of money? How much is sitting in a vault in the Caymans,
not circulating? Could we print a lot more and spread it around, in Wheaties
boxes, dropped from airplanes, PayPal gifts... Does anyone else remember
John Beresford Tipton, unseen benefactor who had his secretary, Michael
Anthony, drop a cool million on someone each week and watch it change
(and sometimes ruin) their lives? Links to pages about the 1955-1960 TV
series The Millionaire are here,
here,
and here.
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Hunka
hunka burning love started the Colorado wildfires.
MEOW:
Ridiculously wonderful, funny Cat Stevens Harry Chapin parody.
I'm not going to spoil it for you. Look
and listen:
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com
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