My random observations on pop culture this week aren’t that pithy or clever, but I did randomly observe them so there is that.
1. Donny Osmond will remain in your tubes with ebbs and flows forever. The man constantly reinvents himself. (And, yes, I did like his song in Mulan. Shut Up. Yes, I did watch him when I was 10-years-old because I had three damned channels and I was 10.) I don’t watch Dancing With The Stars but I do read Entertainment Weekly and dude won.
2. I’ve seen all the controversy on Adam Lambert’s appearance on the AMA awards this week. I have two mindsets on this. Once again, I don’t watch American Idol either, so what I’ve seen of Lambert is peripheral. First of all, I don’t have children but I can see this upsetting parents. My Facebook account has shown that it wasn’t by any means appreciated from the people there and I understand that. As a matter of fact, I think that’s completely appropriate. Letters have been sent to ABC complaining about his performance and the last I heard was roughly about 1,500. On the other hand, for three solid days from a social media perspective, we’ve seen him trend on Twitter with a huge blast of support from his fans there as well which people haven’t been talking about, he’s been interviewed a kajillion times and that’s the kind of publicity you can’t buy.He reminds me of David Bowie (I know, call me Captain Obvious) and because I’m an old codger without kids, my first reaction was that his vocal performance was very pitchy (my mother was a singer, so I play critic sometimes on vocal live performances which, however bad, are always better than lip synch crap.)
Was the simulated sexual act over the top, yes it was way over the top in a live performance and was nothing more than shock value and gratuitous but I’ve seen other stuff too that sort of shocked me on the tubes. Was Lambert kissing a dude over the top? No. Been done a million times by other performers not just between two guys. He pushed open a door where people are talking about freedom of expression/gay rights and that’s not bad. So I see this from two perspectives. Do folks have the right to be upset about simulated oral sex? Yeah, their feelings are valid. Everyone’s feeling are valid. Did Lambert kick down a door? Yeah, but people have been kicking this door for years and it needs to be kicked. It was a reminder more or less. Remember when they wouldn’t show Elvis’ hips on the Ed Sullivan show because he was too sexual. Back then, that was scandalous as well so I have been keeping that in mind.
I remind you I’m a codger butt.
So I see both sides where this issue is and it’s intriguing to me, especially in the day and age of the Internet.
3. Zhu Zhu pets are apparently the toy of the year. I am constantly perplexed on the world of robotic pets.
5. Also in the Thanksgiving vein, I offer you the impossibly optimistic website called “Gives Me Hope” which is smaltzy and did, indeed, make my eyes well up because I’m a silly nostalgic woman. (Pssst … don’t tell anybody.)
I was off-line for roughly 26 hours during the holiday but my eyeballs were glued to CNN as I watched the crisis in Mumbai. Anytime I head to the farm, you drown in the silence as you look at the acres behind the house and sometimes the computer and it’s sexy ways are just not what you need.
I watched the news though with abandon. As a person that tries to understand why things happen, my main question was, and still is, regarding the motive of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
And when I did return to Casa Coma, I started reading Twitter, seeing the flickr pages that were set up with photos of Mumbai and perusing international newspapers getting their take on what was going on. There appears to be a lot of unprecedented issues happening in this situation from a military perspective as well as a media one. As I write this, the violence, explosions and bloodshed continues. I also saw a story on CNN critical of Twitter during the crisis which I pondered over. The CNN story focuses on misinformation on Twitter. My thoughts on that as that it was a place where people wanted to share information quickly and were looking for some sort of thread on why the hell this was happening.
I think CNN’s story was a bit bitchy more so than actual critiquing what is honestly the future of how news will be delivered in the very near future. MSM still is the go to guy so the story was silly in my opinion.
What Tom and others might not realize is that Arrington is correct, because he calls Twitter a news source, rather than a source of news. News sources are often wrong, and that’s why journalists learn early in their training that multiple sources are needed to report anything as absolutely factual. The oft-quoted motto of the late City News Bureau of Chicago is the illustration here: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
The point is that anything or anyone can be a news source.
I started out in radio as Kirk did and I was spotlighted by that radio station recently on how I was the only person in town that had the AP wire. The radio hosts (I didn’t hear it) spoke of how we went from the teletype machine buzzing and honking to the AP coming directly to my mike in my office as I read the news. At the time in 1991, it was revolutionary.
Now, everyone has a news wire on their computer. In following Twitter and online news sources regarding Mumbai, I am joining everyone who utilizes that news source regarding breaking news. As someone who has worked in news for a long time, I don’t believe everything I see but much of it is accurate from what I can see.
As for Mumbai, I have watched with horror as everyone else has. I still am trying to understand motive but I think that I’m going to be waiting a long time for that to be answered.
I have been watching and reading about Magpie. I’ve tried to be thoughtful about it but I have to tell you, I don’t think it’s something I would want to do.
Do I want money? Sure I do. Advertise your butt off here if you are so inclined.
However, the idea that some of us have taken small steps to garner some credibility in the blogosphere and on Twitter makes me wonder about Magpie. Yeah, there is a hashtag on it but I still just don’t think this would go with what I do here. It seems a bit disingenious for me to be tweeting about Mabel or democrats in Tennessee and then shilling Colon cleanser or the like.
I am not one of the big boys by any stretch of the imagination, but my Twitterverse is mine. Yes, I do link to my blog on Twitter. However, those of you who know me know what you are getting into because we have that relationship.
Advertisers pay on a cost-per-thousand-impression basis, and the ads are promised to be delivered to relevant audiences based on keywords. That means Be-A-Magpie will analyze the content of your Twitter messages to see if there is a match to particular advertisers.
The TechCrunch Twitter account, with 31,000 followers, can earn a whopping €14,410.51 per month, it says.
The service auto-determines the number of ads to insert per legitimate Twitter message – the default is one ad for every five Tweets. The service inserts the ads automatically by storing your Twitter credentials. As for disclosure – well, there really isn’t any. A #magpie hashtag is added to each Tweet, but that’s it.
Advertising. It’s necessary. And the advertising world is changing so quickly that it’s a full-time job just trying to keep up. If you want to really get a feel for what is happening, go to Kurt Varner’s this very second who links to a must read for those of us in advertising. I also know it’s evolving before our very eyes.
Whether you campers know it or not, I’m old school trying to learn new school. As for Magpie, I just don’t think it would work for me as this blog is a labor of love. Twitter has opened an entirely new world to myself and others like me.
To throw the advertising into something very personal of Twitter is just not something I would be comfortable doing.
As happens so often, the blogosphere — which newspapers STILL think is nothing but a collection of kitty photos and grammatically flawed rants — has been so far ahead of the curve, that I, for one, can’t stand talking about it anymore. It’s like a freshman who just discovered existentialism and makes a black-and-white film about death.
So many “leaders” are standing on the shoulders of giants, discussing these ideas has if they thought of them, as if they are now the insightful experts who will lead the way. To what, exactly?
Dave Winer posted this comment on the Outing piece :
These people are only thinking about themselves, they need to start thinking about the function they perform.
Bingo. All they are thinking about, as they enter truly epic financial woes, is how they can save themselves. Not how they can reconstruct tattered journalism,or participate in reinventing media or contribute to technology. And certainly not how they can empower people.
This post hits on a lot of great points about how frustrating the issue of so many news conglomerates just don’t get it. And how some of us actually are watching as the revolution is upon us.
When politics becomes entertainment, we get addicted to the gossip. The prospect of governing seems difficult and deliberative, definitively un-sexy. We’ve fast-forwarded from instant nostalgia to instant projection.
I was talking to a couple of journalists last week about this very thing. Everyone was so caught up in the election that we were drowning in it with every nuance of what might happen being dissected by our overloaded brains.
Now that it’s over, we are finding ourselves sort of readjusting our jock straps (I don’t have one but my buddies might. I don’t know.)
The economy still sucks. Most folks ideology hasn’t changed. I still like cheese. The moon is still in the sky. Lou Dobbs is still being paid and I’ve decided that his mere presence still annoys me. Thanksgiving is still inconvenient for me as it is every year. Christmas will be present-lite this year.
You see, the world has a new president-elect, but not a lot has changed. Now we are being bombarded by what kind of puppy the Obama family will get. I just know that Mabel is not available but would be a fine presidential dog. I don’t know what’s going to happen, life just keeps moving forward yet somehow stays in place at the same time.
I have no ideas about projecting what’s going to happen, but I realized I have been pulling an Anderson Cooper. And that is that this weekend was filled with mindless watching of bad reality television, French films, slothlike behavior on my part and burned chili.
No, I didn’t watch the Obama interview on 60 minutes. I think my cranium demanded that I take a break from it all.
You can only do so much before you become a political zombie. So I pondered yesterday why Tyra Banks is called a diva and Donald Trump isn’t because I think they are basically the same in many ways.
Jane Q. Public alerted to me on Twitter that Bigfoot’s campaign for president is gaining momentum.
Mabel, who had an unsuccesful bid for the presidency, has made her endorsement for the elusive beast.
“I believe that America needs Bigfoot to lead this nation out of dark times,” Mabel said telepathically. “Nessie will make a fine running mate.”
Rumors have been persistent that Mabel will be offered the Secretary of Steak position. Mabel has agreed publicly that she will accept the appointment if it is offered.
Andrew Sullivan writes for The Atlantic Online on how blogging for journalists has evolved.
Anyone who has blogged his thoughts for an extended time will recognize this world. We bloggers have scant opportunity to collect our thoughts, to wait until events have settled and a clear pattern emerges. We blog now—as news reaches us, as facts emerge. This is partly true for all journalism, which is, as its etymology suggests, daily writing, always subject to subsequent revision. And a good columnist will adjust position and judgment and even political loyalty over time, depending on events. But a blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing—and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater.
No columnist or reporter or novelist will have his minute shifts or constant small contradictions exposed as mercilessly as a blogger’s are. A columnist can ignore or duck a subject less noticeably than a blogger committing thoughts to pixels several times a day. A reporter can wait—must wait—until every source has confirmed. A novelist can spend months or years before committing words to the world. For bloggers, the deadline is always now.
The entire read is a good one and I suggest it whole heartedly. The one thing he says in the excerpt that caught my eye is about the deadline being now.
And that’s what’s breaking the back of traditional news media. Online is instant.
And people who read blogs or news sites on line, they want news as it’s happening.
It’s quite a thing to behold. But Sullivan also says this is a golden age for journalism. And it is.
News, as I’ve said before, is news regardless of if it is on the printed page or the computer screen.
I had to recuse myself from a story yesterday. Just like the judge and the district attorney, I had to say no to a story and I’m going to have to stay away from it.
Editor Bates will do just fine with it. It has to run. She’s a rock star anyway, although I don’t think she knows it. She’s amazing.
And I’m dealing with the emotions that go along with seeing someone that I know, that I grew up with and that is part of my family behave, how do I say it, absolutely awful.
Why, you may be asking? A distant family member was arrested. If he did what he’s accused of doing, then he will go to jail. For a long time, I might add. What did he do? Well, and the reporter is coming out in me, he allegedly beat the hell out of his girlfriend and held her captive. How bad was it?
Let’s just say the TBI is involved.
And the nieces found out about it at school. We knew over the weekend but we waited for the details. We didn’t tell them because we didn’t know the extent of what was happening. We knew it was bad. We didn’t know how bad it was. Some kid spilled the beans in all of it’s horribly glory to the oldest niece.
It’s bad. It’s heinous.
I talked to the oldest niece this morning. I told her I went to court and watched the arraignment, let those folks know that because of the family connection, I was out of it. Yesterday, she cried, according to Homer. I asked to speak to her which Homer said might be a good idea.
I own that this morning, as I talked to this 7th grader, I told the truth and another brick out of the wall of her innocence I personally knocked out. I’m not a mother, but we needed for her to know that Mister Right died a long time ago. I explained that it wasn’t a reflection of her but sometimes we get hit by emotional shrapnel. Being an adult in the life of a young person whom I adore is not always fun, but it’s necessary for her to know the realities.
Damn.
Note to young journalists in small town news, sometimes you have to just go look people in the eye because sometimes you will run things that are going to hurt feelings including your own. Own it and move forward. If you don’t make people mad, then you aren’t doing your job. It’s best to make both sides of an issue mad, because then you know you are doing your job well.
But it’s news. And despite the personal connections you might have, you HAVE to run these things because if you didn’t, then you become part of the problem.
There are no favors in news. There can’t be.
And, my dear friends, these things are the downside of working in small town news. I have put relatives on the front page and it’s never fun. With a writing staff of two and a half people, you can’t run from these things. And, although it can be painful and everyone thinks reporters are barracudas, we really aren’t. We are human and in the coming days, I will see the hurt look on the faces of people I care about. Sometimes the news biz is amazingly wonderful, but there is always a flip side. This is a social business, a business where trust is crucial. We have to maintain that trust by reporting things we might want to hide our heads in the sand about but we can’t. Journalists just can’t.
And, although I recused myself, I’m still the editor and my name is all over that newspaper.
I say again, there are no favors in news and no one is above the law.
Is this person guilty? I am not a judge but I will say that the evidence thus far is overwhelming. And the sad fact that it’s not the first time.
I have put him on the front page before.
My day yesterday was one of the busiest I’ve had since I rejoined the news biz. And last night, I had to put on my Mary Sunshine face and go to a local event.
It took everything I had in me as I found out a friend had died just moments before I went.
I’m not a robot and there is a hole in the pit of my stomach this morning.
Sorry about the rambling. One week from today, I turn 43-years-old and I feel every bit of it this morning.
I guess it’s pretty obvious that I’ve changed the digs around here under the empowering and teaching skills of Sadcox, who rocks because he’s helping me learn new things.
There will be a few more changes in the next couple of days but nothing drastic.
Lindsey wrote something that gave me pause. And man, did she ever get this right.
People (myself included) read newspapers and get f**king giddy when they notice things that are wrong. It’s probably because newspapers purport to be publications of prestige and record; we are the final word, the bit that, were we in a movie, would be spinning toward the camera in a dramatic attempt to have meaning and finality. So when I f**k up a news page, I am essentially pissing on posterity. That’s not an easy burden to carry.
When I read the last two lines, I realized she said something so well I’ve not ever been able to verbalize.
Lindsey, sometimes I feel the same way for what’s it’s worth.
