What do real thugs think of The Wire?

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Sudhir Venkatesh knows a thing or two about street gangs and got some New York thugs together to watch the season opener of The Wire to get their take on the show and the characters. From his Freakonomics blog post:

“For the first episode, we gathered in the Harlem apartment of Shine, a 43-year-old half Dominican, half African-American man who managed a gang for fifteen years before heading to prison for a ten-year drug trafficking sentence. I invited older guys like Shine, most of whom had retired from the drug trade, because they would have greater experience with rogue cops, political toughs, and everyone else that makes The Wire so appealing. They affectionately named our gathering “Thugs and ‘Cuz.” (I was told that the “‘cuz” — short for “cousin” — was for me.)

There was plenty of popcorn, ribs, bad domestic beer, and fried pork rinds with hot sauce on hand. The pork rinds, apparently the favorite of the American thug, ran out so quickly that one of the low-ranking gang members in attendance was dispatched to acquire several more bags.”

What did the bad boys think? Bunk is on the take; McNulty and the Bunk will split and Prop Joe should whack Marlo. [Thanks, John]

Why “old” media struggle online

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Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman on why most TV stations haven’t done well online:

“I’ll give you these four reasons: 1) lack of investment in people and technology 2) unwillingness to take necessary risks 3) TV-driven power structure which results in the inability for web management to quickly allocate resources as they see fit and 4) a bizarre addiction to brand consistency, which limits creative ideas up and down the organization.”

I think these apply to most “old media” companies. Brand extension is not always the way to go.

Show Me Clowns for Jesus National Conference

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Scary_clownThat was the headline of a news release that came in to the Missourinet newsroom this week:

  • Over 200 clowns of every size and shape to tickle your funny bone led by Buttons with his Menagerie of Make-believe Mammals and Chagy the Clown
  • High wire feats and breathtaking motorcycle stunts that will take you to the edge of your seat by Castro and Company
  • Unbelievable juggling skill by the dynamic Cody Byrn
  • Amazing illusions that will surprise your eyes and may change your life by Duane Laflin who will also serve as our Ringmaster
  • And… many more surprises

“Circus of the King” is sponsored by Show Me Clowns for Jesus National Conference. Currently the largest ministry clown conference in the world celebrating its 23rd year of training people to use clowning and the creative arts in ministry.

“Instead of shouting the message, hide it”

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Will we still get carpet bombed by mindless 30 second commercials in the future? (And by future I mean a couple of weeks from now.) Seems unlikely, but how will savvy marketers reach –and more importantly– engage us? How do you “reach people who are so media-saturated they block all attempts to get through.”

Perhaps with alternate reality games (ARG’s). That’s the subject of a fascinating article by Frank Rose in this month’s Wired Magazine (Issue 16.01).

“The initial clue was so subtle that for nearly two days nobody noticed it. On February 10, 2007, the first night of Nine Inch Nails’ European tour, T-shirts went on sale at a 19th-century Lisbon concert hall with what looked to be a printing error: Random letters in the tour schedule on the back seemed slightly boldfaced. Then a 27-year-old Lisbon photographer named Nuno Foros realized that, strung together, the boldface letters spelled “i am trying to believe.” Foros posted a photo of his T-shirt on the Spiral, the Nine Inch Nails fan forum. People started typing “iamtryingtobelieve.com” into their Web browsers. That led them to a site denouncing something called Parepin, a drug apparently introduced into the US water supply. Ostensibly, Parepin was an antidote to bioterror agents, but in reality, the page declared, it was part of a government plot to confuse and sedate citizens. Email sent to the site’s contact link generated a cryptic auto-response: “I’m drinking the water. So should you.” Online, fans worldwide debated what this had to do with Nine Inch Nails. A setup for the next album? Some kind of interactive game? Or what?”

I’m not a gamer. At all. But I love shit like this. Reminds me of the viral video snippets in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. The Wired article is well worth the read.

Scott Adams: Religion and Politics

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“Why would you vote for a president who has a different religion than you? If you are certain of the rightness of your own beliefs, and equally certain of the wrongness of a presidential candidate’s belief, that proves the candidate has, in your opinion, bad judgment about the most important question in reality.”

“You wouldn’t vote for a candidate who believes in Ouija boards or horoscopes, because such beliefs would be a reliable indication of simple-mindedness. So why would you vote for a candidate who can’t figure out what version of God is right? If he can’t get that right, according to you, how good is his judgment? You probably think picking the right religion is not a hard challenge, because you got it right without much struggle. You want your leader to be at least as smart as you.”

“No one really believes what they say they believe, at least not in the same way you believe you have to open the front door in order to walk through it. There are two sorts of belief. One is the type you act on, and the other is the type you use to feel good about your place in the universe. As long as a president doesn’t use religion as a guide to action, then it has no bearing on his potential job performance. And he is not a liar or a hypocrite if you accept the notion that there are two types of belief, and they don’t need to interfere with each other.”

[Full post]

Make iPhone listen to radio, tell you what’s playing

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“You’re riding in the car and a great song comes on the radio. You’re dying to know what it is so you can go buy it ASAP but there’s no satellite radio receiver to tell you what’s playing. How can you find out what song it is? Whip out your iPhone, put it near the car speakers, and watch the screen. Poof! There’s the song, artist, and album.” — TUAW.COM

Okay. This could make me trade in my Tracfone. iPhoner Tom promises to try this out and let me know how it works.

Advertiser Optimism by Medium

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From Terry Heaton’s PoMo Blog:

"Advertiser Perceptions latest survey of 2,047 ad executives (published twice yearly) — as published by Online Media Daily — reveals growing pessimism among ad buyers about traditional forms of advertising. I view this study as significant, because it speaks directly with people who are making decisions about spending money."

Adforecast

Only newspapers face a smaller increase and larger decrease than radio? [Emphasis/red from original post]

Changing newsroom culture

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“The feeling in newsrooms, especially among the people on the new-media side, seems to be that there are an awful lot of people within organizations that aren’t on board with a vision of changing for the future. Even when top management has developed a new corporate vision for a digital, multi-media and less print-centered future, and communicated it to “the troops,” implementation is being slowed by many people in the organization — including mid-level managers — who still don’t buy into the idea that a total transformation of the news organization is necessary.”

“Everyone’s got work to do to put out the “daily miracle,” but in an era when the old industry model is in decline, we can no longer afford to have a workforce where the majority are solely doing the work of “putting out the paper.”

“The smart news organization in 2008 will be the one that encourages innovation — no, requires it — from ALL its employees. It will get everyone involved: in planning meetings; in committees charged with specific research and/or implementation projects. It will create some time in the schedules of everyone in the organization to do the work of innovation, and make that an integral assignment.”

“Most importantly, it will develop a training program to teach new-media skills to those still lacking, and regularly bring in innovation and creativity experts to guide both managers and employees. With the latter, exposure to and interaction with those experts will be company-wide.”

— Steve Outing at Editor & Publisher

Obama is “a good vague”

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Picked up a copy of Rolling Stone while roaming around Barnes & Noble this morning to see what Matt Taibbi was up to. In a piece written a few weeks before the Iowa Caucuses, he explains Barack Obama’s appeal (“Obama on the Rise”).  An excerpt:

“While Obama glows like the chosen one, taking Kennedy-esque flight on the wings of destiny, next to him Hillary sometimes comes off like an angry drag queen, enraged that some other tramp has been allowed to “Danke Schoen” in her Las Vegas. Obama sees this and isn’t above pointing at her Adam’s apple. “I’m not running for president because I think this is somehow owed to me,” Obama says. And people believe it. … “There’s just something about him,” says one middle-aged gentleman. When I suggest that his comment was vague, he shrugs. “Yeah, but it’s good vague.”

You’ll find the full article at The Smirking Chimp.

Nokia Internet Radio service

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Mark Ramsey (Hear 2.0) asks how long before mobile phones in the U.S. look like this Nokia phone available in Europe. As I watched the video demo, I imagined listening to a Missouri Tiger “broadcast.” Or an all-news channel from one of our state networks. Ramsey’s headline says it all.