Category Archives: Media & Culture
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978) is a book by Jerry Mander, who argues that many of the problems with television are inherent in the medium and technology itself, and thus cannot be reformed. From Wikipedia page:
“Television has effects, very important effects, aside from the content, and they may be more important. They organize society in a certain way. They give power to a very small number of people to speak into the brains of everyone else in the system night after night after night with images that make people turn out in a certain kind of way. It affects the psychology of people who watch. It increases the passivity of people who watch. It changes family relationships. It changes understandings of nature. It flattens perception so that information, which you need a fair amount of complexity to understand it as you would get from reading, this information is flattened down to a very reduced form on television. And the medium has inherent qualities which cause it to be that way.”
Nobody’s listening to news on the radio
“Digital outlets serve as the main source of news for the majority of those under 35, including 64% of those between the ages of 18 and 24. Meanwhile, TV still reigns supreme for 51% of those over 55.” — Business Insider
“Notification gratification”
“Social media was serving, at least for me, as a sponge that wicks up any stray attention—and with it, time—and then keeps drawing more of both until you consciously break away from it. And of course it does — unlike reading, working, physical activity, or real-life socializing, social media is an activity that takes no effort. It doesn’t require any confidence, resolve, or intention, and doesn’t entail any risk.”
The only social media apps on my phone were Google+ and tumblr, with the former getting the lion’s share of attention. Both gone now. I can still check in but I have to be “intentional” about it, as David Cain says in his thoughtful post. Sit down. Open up the MacBook. And a browser. He said the mindless scrolling was eating up 45 minutes to an hour a day. Easy to believe.
Rotary dial phone
Is it getting harder to write good spam?
I never look at the email Gmail flags as spam. I just delete it, or let Gmail delete it. If some non-spam email gets tossed, no big deal. But this morning a subject line caught my eye. “Stop Sending Me Your Photos!”
This struck me as mildly clever. Someone is sending a stranger my photos? Gadzooks! — or — Did I mistakenly send photos to wrong person?! — or — I better let Jackie know it wasn’t me sending her photos.
I don’t know why it is so hard for some people to ignore ALL email from strangers? Do such come-ons tap into some latent loneliness?
It occurs to me there are people whose job it is to craft email messages and subject lines that will entice recipients to open. I’d love to get half a dozen of those folks in a room for a discussion. How’d they get into that line of work? Where do you get your best ideas? Can you always spot spam?
Roger Ailes Was One of the Worst Americans Ever
From Matt Taibbi’s beautiful tribute to the founder of Fox news.
“Ailes made this the hate-filled, moronic country it is today. We are a paranoid, untrusting, book-dumb and bilious people whose chief source of recreation is slinging insults and threats at each other online, and we’re that way in large part because of the hyper-divisive media environment he discovered.”
TMZ: “Ailes fell at his Florida home 8 days ago and hit his head. We’re told Ailes fell unconscious and his condition went downhill. Our sources say he was put into an induced coma and died Thursday morning.”
Interviews
This is a little housekeeping post. A list of people with whom I have done interviews. A search by name should take you to these. This link will pull them all up.
2024-2014
- Wes Fewell’s Club Juana (2024)
- Wes Scott’s Speed Wagon (2024)
- Ron Bandelier (2019)
- Shawn Quinn: Keeping the ball in play (2019)
- Michael Mistler: Wind Sculptures (2018)
- Landis Duffett – Teaching Chinese in high school (2018)
- Ash Furrow – Mastodon (2017)
- Tom Boman – Learfield Sports (2017)
- Allen Hammock – Straylight (2017)
- David Brazeal – RepublicTigerSports.com (2017)
- David Gerstmann – Beginning of WireReady (2017)
- Gaylon Watson – KBOA (2014)
- Bob Priddy – His career at Learfield (2014)
2010-2009
- Jay Parks – Truck Drummer
- Keith Povall – UK buddy (2010)
- Matthew Howard – Photography (2009)
- Tony Messenger – Covering state capitol (2009)
- Tessie Hubbard – “Panty Mython” (2009)
- Clarence Lee Sherrill – Concrete Lawn Art (2009
- Paul Roe – British Ink (tattoos) (2009)
- Tim Robyn – State of Missouri websites (2009)
- Joe Bankhead – KBOA (interview by Jeff Wheeler) (2009)
- Jonathan Brownfield – Sports Photography (2009)
2008-2003
- Jason Rogers – Fez-O-Rama (2008)
- Mike Spooner – Animation (2008)
- Dave Shepherd – Radio (2007)
- Dan Shelley – WCBS-TV (2006)
- Ben Brogdon – Brushes with Near Greatness (2006)
- Dan Arnall – Journalism (2006)
- Kevin O’Keefe – Lawyer Blogs (2006)
- Dan Shelley – Radio/Journalism (2005)
- Mike McKean – Journalism (2005)
- Mary Quass – Radio (2003)
The people who make the streaming playlists
Good piece from last year on the people who curate playlists for streaming music services:
“As streaming has gone mainstream, these curators, many of whom began their professional lives as bloggers and DJs, have amassed unusual influence. Their work, as a rule, is uncredited — the better for services designed to feel like magic — but their reach is increasingly unavoidable. Spotify says 50% of its more than 100 million users globally are listening to its human-curated playlists (not counting those in the popular, algorithmically personalized “Discover Weekly”), which cumulatively generate more than a billion plays per week. According to an industry estimate, 1 out of every 5 plays across all streaming services today happens inside of a playlist. And that number, fueled by prolific experts, is growing steadily.”
“All the signs point to playlists being the dominant mode of discovery in the near future,” says Jay Frank, senior vice president of global streaming marketing for Universal Music Group, the largest of the major label conglomerates. “When it comes to trying to find something exciting and new, more people are going to want to go to trusted playlists.”
I hope these folks always have a job and I sort of think they will. Not convinced an algorithm can do the voodoo they do.
Wikitribune
I’m a big fan of Wikipedia. Whenever Jimmy Wales puts up one of those “we need your support” banners, I pitch in. Tomorrow (?) he’s launching a new project called Wikitribune.
“…a new online publication which will aim to fight fake news by pairing professional journalists with an army of volunteer community contributors. Wikitribune plans to pay for the reporters by raising money from a crowdfunding campaign. Wales intends to cover general issues, such as US and UK politics, through to specialist science and technology.”
Is that ‘through to specialist science and technology’ a typo?
“Those who donate will become supporters, who in turn will have a say in which subjects and story threads the site focuses on. And Wales intends that the community of readers will fact-check and subedit published articles. Like Wikipedia, Wales’s new project will be free to access. The publication is launching on Tuesday 25 April with a crowdfunding campaign pre-selling monthly “support packages” to fund the initial journalists.”
I’m not clear on how this effort will combat ‘fake news’ but don’t much care. People who shriek ‘fake news’ whenever they hear a story they don’t agree with have lost all credibility with me. I’ll be down for a monthly ‘support package.’
The story says journalists will “share full transcripts, video and audio of interviews.” Is there any news organization that routinely does this? If not, I wonder why.
UPDATE (9:20 a.m.) April 25, 2017 — I chose the $120 annually support option. If they don’t reach their goal (enough to hire 10 journalists) in 30 days, I get my money back. As of this writing they had 1,827 supporters, enough to hire one reporter.