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Anarchy: LA RulesAgain
February 3, 2011
Our beloved LAX led the nation last year. In flights? Passengers? Revenue?
No&;in lasers pointed at aircraft! A whopping 102 reported incidents! Let&;s hear it for LA&;home of anomie, disaffection, and, like, whatever.
Tags:LA, LA-anarchy, laser-pointers, LAX Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
Somewhere, Osama Bin Ladin is Laughing His AssOff
November 20, 2010
For years, the idea of &;flying naked&; to show security folks you weren&;t a terrorist was a joke. It&;s not a joke anymore, as the TSA (and more importantly, the political powers above them) feels justified in invasive search, groping and near-sexual assault to &;prove&; passengers aren&;t carrying bombs stuffed up their body cavities.
I&;m no Sarah Palin fan, but this tweet &;TSA: it’s politically incorrect 2 “profile” anyone when natl second is issue?We profile individuals/suspects in other situations!Profile away&; actually seems right on.
Asking people questions and watching their reactions seems much more sensible (and works for the Israelis) rather than what Bruce Schneir calls &;security theatre.&;
Tags:political-correctness, security, terrorism Posted in political-correctness, Politics, technology, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
Reporter Self-Censored TigerWoods Story
May 4, 2010
Reporters these days are often accused of being &;stenographers&;. It&;s a dying art but a good analogy; here it means just taking down verbatim what a source and his handlers have to say.
Actual &;reporting&; (the kind of stuff the Enquirer did with John Edwards) doesn&;t come into the picture. The big fear is loss of access&;getting kicked out of the White House press room, the campaign bus, the locker room, the gravy train.
People Magazine reporter Steve Helling is a case (or coward) in point. As the Daily News quotes him, &;Over the years, I had heard rumors of Tiger&;s partying &; drunken nights at the clubs, dirty dancing with other women, phone numbers slipped to pretty blonds &; but I didn&;t follow up on the tips,&; the, er, reporter admits&;Helling didn&;t want to be cut off from the golden golfer. &;Negative coverage of Tiger &; or even positive coverage that wasn&;t approved and micromanaged &; would often result in swift, permanent excommunication from the Tiger Woods camp,&; he writes. &;It was in everyone&;s best interest to sweep the rumors under the rug.&;
But don&;t feel too bad for Helling&;he got to cash in with a new book on Tiger and his skanks. Just another example of why they call it &;content&; and page view bait now, instead of news.
Tags:death-of-journalism, John-Edwards, National-Enquirer, People-Magazine, Tiger-Woods Posted in death-of-journalism, death-of-magazines, tabloid-journalism, Uncategorized | 1 Comment &;
New Media Publishersas Scum
April 29, 2010
The publisher-writer relationship has always been loaded with antagonism. Publishers think writers are greedy, flaky, unable to understand assignments (or deadlines) and above all, lazy. Writers think publishers are exploitative. As my father-in-law (a publisher of what were called &;pennysavers&;) used to say, &;Writers are a dime a dozen.&; Or as the publisher of a marijuana publication put it, &;You&;re just a writer.&;
Unfortunately, in the world of the Internet and new media, the rapacious nature of publishers is more true now than ever. Now even once-respected news organizations are SYSTEMATICALLY devaluing the worth of a writer&;s work. &;More major media companies are looking for ways to find cheap content&;Thomson Reuters, Cox Newspapers and Hachette Filipacchi have run articles supplied by Associated Content, one of several companies, such as Demand Media and AOL&;s SEED, that mines reporting from masses of freelancers for as little as $5 a story,&; notes AdAge.
Five dollars a story! As a writer I&;ve been paid a dollar a word, sometimes more. Even at 50 cents a word, writers weren&;t getting rich. I used to say that if you wrote two 500 word stories a week, at 50 cents a word, at the end of the year you&;d have made $26,000.
These shameful &;partnerships&; in devaluing the contribution of the writer (content creator) can be blamed on exploitative new media &;publishers&; like Associated Content&;s Patrick Keane. And indeed, note this loathesome comment, &;The evolution of the content cycle has cheapened,&; said Associated&;s CEO Keane.
But just as much blame attaches to editors who should (and do) know better, as in Reuters publishing Associated stories on the economy or &;USA Today&;s recent deal with Demand Media, which is using its network of freelancers to supply pieces for a new Travel Tips section on USA Today&;s website.&; Particularly craven is Keith McAllister, global online editor for Thomson Reuters. &;This was not a business decision, but entirely an editorial one,&; said McAllister. &;We want to fill out the online offering as much as possible. We&;re building Thomson Reuters to be a content candy store.&;
He should have said &;We&;re building Thomson Reuters on the backs of less-than-minimum-wage-paid-freelancers to be a content candy story.&;
The AdAge &;trend&; story notes, &;Associated Content boasts more than 350,000 freelance contributors who have supplied more than 2 million articles. Associated pays its contributors anywhere from $5 to $30 per article, sometimes upfront &; and in some cases pays a performance fee of up to $2 for every 1,000 impressions the story generates within Associated Content&;s site. ..anywhere from $75 to $120 per article. Full-time staffers or even traditional freelancers working directly with publishers cost considerably more.&;
Yes, perhaps even a living wage.
Patrick Keane
Tags:AdAge, AOL-SEED, Associated-Content, exploitation-of-writers, freelancers-devalued Posted in death-of-journalism, death-of-magazines, death-of-newspapers, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
YaySaints!
February 8, 2010
OK I&;m a sucker for a comeback story.
But it&;s also easy to pick a Superbowl team to cheer for if you live in LA, not La. We&;re not bound to rooting for a hometown team. As the football gods don&;t like us as we won&;t appropriate a billion dollars for a stadium, we&;re Free Agent Nation round here.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
Playboy: Bring on the RealGirls!
December 18, 2009
So the Playboy sale has fallen through, largely because of Hugh Hefner&;s insistence on living at the Mansion until his death.
Sad, but even incoherent and out-of-date as it is, this great American brand can still be saved. I&;d love to consult on it or edit the new version, but I&;ll provide the first of my modest proposals for free:
Bring on the real girls!
Yes, I understand that Playboy is supposed to be full of fantasy females as part of its quaint &;Playboy philosophy,&; which philosopher-king Hefner says &;is very, very connected to the American dream&;that we indeed did and do own our own minds and bodies.&;
But right now, the girls have been completely Barbi-cized, between the plastics surgeon&;s knife and sacks o&; saleen, the airbrush and the aerobics and the soft-focus photography. Fake boobs, fake girls.
Instead, why not make it, at least partly, an instruction manual for the impressionable male? Maybe some girls are a bit chubby, others a little nosy, hairy or otherwise quirky. For when the one-hand reader of today&;s magazine (and website) encounters a real girl, they won&;t look like this&;especially down there.
Tags:fake-girls, Hugh-Hefner, Playboy, Playboy-sale-fails Posted in death-of-magazines, Men's Magazines, Playboy, Uncategorized | 1 Comment &;
Why Bill Clinton and Tiger Woods ShouldGolf
December 17, 2009
Bill can take pointers from Tiger on upping his score.
Perhaps Newt Gingrich and Silvio Berlusconi can join them for a foursome. No cheating&;on the course.
Although with Susan MacDougal apparently joining Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers, with allegations by Paula Jones, the President is proving quite the player himself.
Tags:Berlusconi, Bill-Clinton, Monica-Lewinsky, Newt-Gingrich, Susan-MacDougal, Tiger-Woods Posted in 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, political-correctness, Politics, Sex and Society, tabloid-journalism, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
Me, Medical Marijuana and the LATimes
December 8, 2009
Another media blog recently took the LA Times to task for having &;at least three&; of its columnists write expose columns about how easy it is to get medical marijuana. Make that four LA Times writers.
I wrote this piece for the LA Times Magazine in 2007, before any of the other three. And unlike Sandy Banks or Steve Lopez, I actually smoked the stuff and commented on its power. Perhaps in these days of layoffs they&;re afraid of peeing in a cup?
More likely, they (and their editors) suffer a paucity of imagination. The tone of each article was the same; &;Wow, it&;s too easy to get a recommendation for medical marijuana. Now almost anyone can buy some.&;
Yes, like it&;s difficult for anyone to buy marijuana from a dealer. As I wrote in the story,
&;I forked over $50 for an eighth of an ounce. Later, when I told a friend about my purchase, he laughed and delivered the ultimate insult: &;You paid more than street value.&;&;
Tags:LA-Times, Marijuana, medical-marijuana, Sandi-Banks, Steve-Lopez Posted in Los-Angeles-Times, medical-marijuana, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
Vegas Gambling GoesHollywood
November 20, 2009
I know, I know, they call it &;gaming&; rather than gambling, or more properly, losing. As I noted after 20 years of tradeshow gambling in Las Vegas,
&;Like the ice caps melting, I’ve watched the casino gaming pits where one plays blackjack shrink, with the real estate taken over by an army of slot machines for a generation of Americans who prefer to interact with screens rather than a boisterous table of degenerate gamblers.&;
The slots are bright and attractive now, not just one-armed bandits spinning oranges and black bars. At the gaming expo in Las Vegas, the new &;slots&; (that take only green money, credit cards or casino player&;s club/loser&;s club cards) offer &;high-definition animated characters and 3-D graphics, touch-screen technology and Xbox-type or similar video game features.&;
Just as Hollywood now makes &;films&; stripmining our collective past, from &;Bewitched&; and &;Land of the Lost&; (Will Ferrell has fallen far from &;Anchorman&;) to, G-d help us, Mr. Potatohead, gaming companies will bring images, characters and situations from &;The Lord of the Rings&; and, for the distaff crowd, &;Sex and the City&; to the casual slot player.
A Hollywood/Vegas hook-up promoting gambling directly from couch potatoes can&;t be far away.
Tags:Hollywood, Las Vegas, slot-machines, Will-Ferrell Posted in Hollywood, Las Vegas, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
Boys Will Be 86-Year OldBoys
November 18, 2009
It got little attention even on the sports pages, but Bud Adams of the Tennessee Titans was fined $250,000 by the National Football League for his on-the-field outburst against Ralph Wilson and the Buffalo Bills.
Is Bud Adams a criminal cornerback or gay-baiting running back?
No, Adams is the owner of the Titans. He got the fine for flipping the bird at Buffalo Bills fans, players and fellow owner and WWII veteran Ralph Wilson, 91, after the Titans defeated the Bills 41-17 in a Toilet Bowl match up of 3-6 teams going nowhere.
You can see this low point on video here.
Adams, who is both an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and a U.S Navy veteran, should know better. But hey&;why own a football team if you can&;t tell your rivals to fuck off?
Tags:Bud-Adams, NFL, obscene-gestures, Ralph-Wilson, Tennessee-Titans Posted in Sports, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;
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