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by Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
April
1, 2002
This is
not an April Fool's joke: I
am technically on vacation, leaving tomorrow for Europe, thanks to British
Airways' panicky fire sale in January. By the end of the week I'll be
settled into a houseboat
on an Amsterdam canal, and will file from there. Expect flower photos,
since I have press credentials for the once-a-decade Floriade
flower show. I am writing this from the floor surrounded by a Dell laptop,
a Nikon digital camera, battery chargers, 220-volt adapters, serial cables
and a USB port card reader (the card, a tiny piece of portable storage,
replaces "film"). If I get it all working together on the boat,
you'll see reports from a city that, by all accounts, is vastly different
from America's current "Mommy Culture" (Wear your seat belt,
don't smoke, eat fat-free and die anyway!).
Anniversary:
Marvin
Gaye (photos)
might have turned 63 tomorrow, had he not been fatally
shot by his father, Marvin
Gay Sr., 18 years ago today. Tai Moses, editor of Metro Santa Cruz,
looks at What's Goin' On (song
from NPR report, longer
background story), Gaye's 1971 break from Motown pop (I
Heard It Through the Grapevine) during the Vietnam war era, the
man and his legacy in The
Rebirth of Marvin Gaye. Undeniably, an everyday part of that legacy:
Gaye's 1982 song Sexual
Healing is now on nearly every bar jukebox in America,
Timely
segue: Is
protest music dead?
How
Power Shapes the News: The Second Annual FAIR Report, Fear
& Favor 2001 from Fairness
& Accuracy In Reporting
Fight
for the future (continued): Biased reporting is frustrating. Democrats
vs. New Media by Glenn Harlan Reynolds gets the pie in the face today:
"And nothing illustrates the problem more than what happened the
same day that (Democratic National Committee chairman Terry) McAuliffe
got his $7 million check from an entertainment mogul: Democratic Sen.
Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, himself a recipient of nearly $300,000
in entertainment-industry money during the last election cycle, introduced
legislation that seems guaranteed to ensure that the small-media world
will hate the Democrats, whose support for copy protection -- and receipt
of campaign contributions from the entertainment industry -- far outweighs
that of Republicans. "
Hey, these
are the opening steps of the dance. Since then, Rep.
Adam Schiff (R-CA) has announced that he
is looking for sponsors for a House bill like Hollings's.
Weblog indexes
Daypop
and Blogdex
also show lots of links to a Wired story by Declan
McCullough headlined, "Hollings
Howls Will Have to Wait." The news here is "Sen. Patrick
Leahy (D-Vt.) says a controversial proposal to embed copy protection in
electronics gear will not become law this year. Since Leahy is the powerful
chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, his opposition instantly boosts
the difficulty Hollywood studios will encounter in their attempts to enact
sweeping copyright legislation. The Vermont Democrat said through a spokesman
that he 'does not' support the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television
Promotion Act (CBDTPA), which Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina) introduced
this month. "
(The judiciary
committee seeks your input at http://judiciary.senate.gov/special/input_form.cfm?comments=1
)
There are
excellent responses to Reynolds, linked to pop up in a small vertical
window on the page. One suggests, "In the end, I have no idea what's
going on in this issue other than that Reynolds seems to have something
against successful members of the entertainment industry and against Democrats.
Not what I'd call news I can use." A response to that fills in the
concrete background on what the bill would require and prohibit, and sneers
at the previous media critic, "Educate yourself next time you decide
to make a comment. " (Jerk.) Pooling the input of all three, we have
a more complete story.
Webcasting
labyrinth: How
to operate an Internet radio station legally.
April
Fool's 1: A somewhat nonsensical story in the (U.K.) Register : "AOL
gets it! Steve Case gets it!" beamed Dave Winer today, after brokering
a deal that sees two hundred of the most popular weblogs become part of
the AOL-Time Warner publishing empire."
Winer
is the author of a program called Radio
Userland (software and a year of updates plus hosting for your weblog
costs $39.95 per computer) which allegedy permits people who don't know
html to publish weblogs. But it looks
like a clunky html editor to me, not really for the novice; unlike
real html editors, whose WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) windows
work on Macs or PCs, NS or IE, if you aren't using I.E. on a PC, you have
to code. This eliminates not only novices using Netscape, but Mac users
who, as a breed, tend to create the cool artsy sites. Indeed, tracking
technology is a big part of many weblogs' daily buzz, making some incomprehensible
to those of other religions. Members of this Radio Userland user group
belong to a network called Weblogs.com,
and it is these that AOL is allegedly to take on board.
The Register
describes the reaction of an AOL executive to the deal: "...we think
we have 78 per cent of the libertarian news blogs, 91 per cent of the
ClueTrain Manifesto fan sites, and 59 per cent of all blogging female
arts graduates, many of whom are Virgos." (Not me. I'm a Cancer.)
"And the
possibilities for vertical integration are endless," he enthused. "No
cat will ever go ill again in America again in obscurity." This is perhaps
a refernce both to the personal nature of many West Coast weblogs ("my
day" in Proustian detail) and to an English
cat named Frank, who was hit by a car in January, which made him a
wildly popular celebrity in the land of tea and crumpets:: Frank's recovery
from a broken pelvis has been broadcast live on a webcam ever since at
http://www.cathospital.co.uk/
April
Fool's 2: AOL announces its intent to acquire Saltire,
a weblog devoted to covering business and technology. "The transaction,
which is expected to close in April, is contingent on obtaining necessary
consents and approvals from various regulatory agencies. As part of the
deal, Saltire will be required to divest its shares in the Titanic Deck
Chair Rearrangement Corporation (NASDAQ:TDCRC). AOL Time Warner CEO Gerald
M. Levin said, "this acquisition will really increase the depth of our
content coverage, and will allow us to extend our brand reach into the
weblogging world." Saltire editor Steve MacLaughlin said, "Hey, I figured
that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Plus, they threw in free cable television
for life."
April Fool's 3:
April Fool's 4:
Hilarious,
these geek humorists, eh?
Time waster:
See if you have what it takes to quit your day job and be a retail entrepreneur!
Playing the online Lemonade
Game. You have a lemonade stand, a weather report and a limited budget
with which to buy cups, lemons sugar and ice.How much to buy, and how
much to charge. Addictive. (When I should have been packing, I was selling
lemonade.) Hint: You won't make more money by lowering your price or quality.
Back
issues: Week one
Back
issues: Week two
Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com
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