Category: Media Matters

ArtsJournal Publishing featured no less than four articles this week about the creekier institutions of the business and how they plan to modernize themselves for the 21st century. The New York Times reported that the Book of the Month Club has been losing members steadily over the last decade and is taking steps to compete in the age of Amazon. Earlier they reported extensively on Sara Nelson appointment to editor-in-chief at Publisher’s Weekly (locked behind a members only firewall so I’m passing on this other link) , which is largely being seen as an attempt to bring the magazine into the age of the book blog, the email newsletter and the rss feed. Finally two pieces, one hilarious, one narrow-minded, discuss both the economics of publishing and how that has changed the author’s role from artist to pitchman, to guerilla marketer, to a hybrid of all three.

I’m taking this examples as evidence that the publishing business is finally starting to wake up. Max Perkins and his three martini lunches are dead. When Thomas Pynchon and JD Salinger pass on, the myth of the reclusive author will go with them. The idea that technology and books can’t mix tastefully is seeming stupid rather than charming. Concerted, smart, professional marketing is beginning to seem like an everyday necessity rather than an occassional stroke of genius. Beating beneath it all is the very real notion that books are just one offering at the vast cultural salad bar now available to everyone. In order to compete, they can’t assume they are special or even unique. They have to prove it by showing their reader why the reader should bother, when so many choices abound. Assuming they should is now a fatal mistake, not just a harmless shot of snobbery.

It’s a very tall order but one I think everyone in our business will be better for in the long run. It’s the reader’s world now. Illustrating why we matter will keep us honest. Or as least keep us from assuming it has been and thus will always be.

As if this week hasn’t been media-ganked enough, on Monday I downloaded (and paid for) a Sixty Force and a copy of Mario64 from CoolRom. Now I can play the game on my Apple IBook. Which is better than paying $28 to do so on a hotel TV, which…eh, someone I know did last weekend.

I, like every other media-obsessed geek, has downloaded Delicious Library, the opening salvo in the next generation of personal media organization. In era’s past, you could have a database of all your CDs, Books, DVDs on your computer but so what? It took forever to get all the data entered and once you had, it just sat their looking pretty.

Delicious Library aims, so far I can tell, to bring the personal library into the age of Web 2.0 connectedness. Not only can you enter data about six different ways (UPC, ISBN number, Isight Scan, Bluetooth) but the app pulls its data down from Amazon and enables you to compare units of culture to one’s like it. It also links up with your OSX Address Book so you can drag an item to a name (a friend say who wants to borrow a book) and create a lending library list. The interface itself is brilliant, a mockup of an actual wood shelf, complete with covers facing out. The whole things create an addictive little behavior loop: Grab stacks of media, take to desk, scan in, fondle digital shelf as it fills up, repeat.

But it ain’t perfect, far from it. For some reason, it took me 20 minutes to figure out how to delete an incorrectly entered unit of media. Would a “delete” button somewhere on the main interface have been so hard? It also relies a little too much on Amazon’s database, which isn’t perfect either. Earlier tonight I tried to enter an out-of-print book. Amazon didn’t have the author’s name but entered all the rest of the book’s data. But once the book had been entered, I couldn’t edit the data at all, even after I pressed the “edit” button.

But imagine the possibilities: What if Delicious Monster could be laid over one’s Orkut profile with media linked and collaratively filtered the same way your friends profiles are. Imagine if your friends could get an RSS feed of your library and see whenever something new was added. Imagine if each unti of media were connected to Technorati which would automatically download reviews, articles, film trailers or audio clips of units of media? Like all good pieces of software, it may not work perfectly now, but you can only begin to dream about what it will do later on.

Selections of interest from the most recent issue of Bitch magazine.

My friend Emily’s great open letter called “Dear Female Friendship Culture” (p. 27).

The jewish-themed blog Bariata, as referred to the article “Blog is my Co-Pilot” about religious blogging (p. 25).

An interview with Janeane Garofalo clued me in to the recent expansion of Air America, the liberal radio network, now in 23 cities and on satellite radio networks.

Cheap Chick, the all-girl Cheap Trick tribute band.

The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (G.L.O.W) which I watched religiously as a lad but hadn’t thought of in years.

Rising star of the latino/lesbian/gansta rap world JenRo. Fierce grooves.

Alternative Radio via KALW just featured a killer speech by Bill Moyers at the National Conference on Media Reform. Common Dreams has graciously reprinted it.

Last two paragraphs…

All this may be in the domain of fantasy. And then again, maybe not. What I know to be real is that we are in for the fight of our lives. I am not a romantic about democracy or journalism; the writer Andre Gide may have been right when he said that all things human, given time, go badly. But I know journalism and democracy are deeply linked in whatever chance we human beings have to redress our grievances, renew our politics, and reclaim our revolutionary ideals. Those are difficult tasks at any time, and they are even more difficult in a cynical age as this, when a deep and pervasive corruption has settled upon the republic. But too much is at stake for our spirits to flag. Earlier this week the Library of Congress gave the first Kluge Lifetime Award in the Humanities to the Polish philosopher Leslie Kolakowski. In an interview Kolakowski said: “There is one freedom on which all other liberties depend – and that is freedom of expression, freedom of speech, of print. If this is taken away, no other freedom can exist, or at least it would be soon suppressed.”

That’s the flame of truth your movement must carry forward. I am older than almost all of you and am not likely to be around for the duration; I have said for several years now that I will retire from active journalism when I turn 70 next year. But I take heart from the presence in this room, unseen, of Peter Zenger, Thomas Paine, the muckrakers, I.F. Stone and all those heroes and heroines, celebrated or forgotten, who faced odds no less than ours and did not flinch. I take heart in your presence here. It’s your fight now. Look around. You are not alone.”

Damn right.

The Times Literary Supplement turned 100 this week. Considered the best critical journal in the English language, the TLS has published 30-50 reviews (about triple that of the New York Times Book Review) of fiction , non-fiction and poetry, once a week for a century. Its contributors (invitation only) reads like an all star team of 20th century literature: T.S. Elliot, Virginia Woolf, Anthony Burgess, Gore Vidal. Although the paper is owned by the Times of London (and it by Satan himself Rupert Murdoch), the parent company has largely left its venerable spawn alone. It has thus ticked along as a haven for wise critical thought, an idea out of fashion and barely in gnat-like attention span universe of today.

So happy birthday TLS. I’ve just bough my first issue, your Centenary. Looking forward to getting to know you.

Big props to Naked Eye Video in the Lower Haight, which I bicycled by this morning. In one fell swoop, I picked up Optic Nerve #8, issue #2 of To-Do List Magazine and the latest issue of Harper’s which I’ve been meaning to check out.

Score!

Now that I’m, like, a member of the media and all that, I suppose I’m entitled to attend events thrown by Media Bisto, which I did this evening. Ran into one of my officemates from the Grotto (Connie, thanks for being you) and saw the back of Alan Deutchman’s head. Even though I could say truthfully that, yes, I write book reviews for the Chronicle and yes, I publish a content-heavy Web site that’s still alive, a little lesion on my confidence makes me wait for some goateed fellow named Kirk who started writing for Vanity Fair at 13, to say “Hey, kid, go home. This is for real writers.”

Insecurity, what would I be without you?

Brill’s Content and Inside.com are finished. You know you’re getting older when you can see a magazine born and then die in your lifetime (via Fud).