Bloggasm

I have been watching the actions of the mysterious internet group called Anonymous with vague interest; one of the weirder things to appear on the internet for sure. It wasn’t long ago that the group declared war on Scientology and managed to shut down Scientology’s website with a distributed denial-of-service-attack.

But since it was mainly confined to the internet, I didn’t give it too much thought. Now, the group has decided to organize real-life events, and it’s getting really creepy. Watch the Youtube video calling for a protest on Feb. 10th embedded below. Beneath the video you’ll find the text of it.

These rules do not represent the writings and ides of any one person. Rules may vary depending on your location.

The following video is intended as guide for Anonymous preparing to engage in their first real-life public demonstration. It will also provide a refresher for those of you who have experience with this modality of petition.

The purpose of the demonstration in a modern western society is to convey a message to the public. In keeping with this objective, Anonymous has drafted 22 rules that Anonymous can follow in order to assure epic win and no loss of hit points on your part.

Rule#0: Rules 1 and 2 of the internet still apply. Your memes are not, at this juncture, something that the real world can appreciate. Although meme speak between fellow Anonymous is acceptable, focus on the targetand keep it to a minimum.

Rule #1: Stay cool.

Rule #2: Stay cool, especially when harassed. You are an ambassador of Anonymous.Although individuals trying to disrupt your demonstration will get onyour nerves, you must not lose your temper. Doing so will harm the protest and tarnish the reputation of Anonymous.

Rule #3: Comply with the orders of law enforcement officers above all else. Doing otherwise is harmful to the demonstration as a whole and may compromise your performance as a human being. Do not request badge numbers unless you are being treated in a very abusive manner, as doing so will anger officers.

Rule #4: Notify city officials. Most jurisdictions either have rules about public protests, or would prefer to be notified that they are taking place. Know the rules for your jurisdiction and abide by them.

Rule #5: Always be across the street from the object being protested.

Rule#6: In the absence of a road, find another natural barrier between yourself and the target of protest. Doing so will make it more difficult for individuals hostile to your cause to come and harass you.

Rule #7: Stay on public property. You may be charged for trespassing if you do not.

Rule #8: No violence.

Rule #9: No weapons. The demonstration is a peaceful event. Your weapons. You will not need them.

Rule #10: No alcohol or pre-drinking. Violating this rule may easily precipitate a violation of rules 1 and 2.

Rule#11: NO graffiti, destruction, or vandalism. Rule #12: If you want todo something stupid, pick another day. These should be self explanatory. Violation of these rules during a demonstration will tarnish the reputation of Anonymous, harm the demonstration itself and leave you vulnerable to attention from law enforcement.

Rule#13: Anonymous is legion. Never be alone. Isolation during a protest marks you as a target for handlers who wish to provoke an angry reaction from you and other hostiles. In keeping with this principle…

Rule #14: Organize in squads of 10 to 15 people.

Rule #15: One or two megaphones per squad. A megaphone is helpful for maintaining the overall cohesion of a demonstration and spreading your message.However, too many will confuse the public and render you hearing impaired.

Rule #16: Know the dress code. Forming a loose yet reasonable dress code for protest members will help to maintain cohesion and get the public to take you seriously.

Rule #17:Cover your face. This will prevent your identification from videos taken by hostiles, other protesters or security. Use scarves, hats and sunglasses. Masks are not necessary, and donning them in the context ofa public demonstration is forbidden in some jurisdictions.

Rule #18: Bring water.

Rule#19: Wear good shoes. Following these rules will assure your comfort during the demonstration. Keep in mind that demonstrations may often bequite lengthy.

Rule #20: Signs, flyers, and phrases. Have yours ready. Make sure that signs are large enough to read. Also ensure that the text on your signs and your phrases are pertinent to the target ofthe protest.

Rule #21: Prepare legible, uncomplicated andaccurate flyers to hand out to those who wish to know more regarding the motivations behind your actions.

Finally, Rule #22: Document the demonstration. Videos and pictures of the event may be used to corroborate your side of the story if law enforcement get involved.Furthermore, posting images and videos of your heroic actions all over the internet is bound to generate win, exhorting other Anonymous to follow your glorious example.

If you follow these simple rules,the success of your action is virtually assured. However, keep in mind that the success of the demonstration as a whole hinges on the good behavior of all those who participate. Ignore these rules at your own peril. Follow them, and victory will be yours.

We are Anonymous.
We do not forgive.
We do not forget.
And now, we are expected

The day has finally arrived. Last Sunday I declared January 30th to be International Delete Your Myspace Account Day. The idea quickly caught fire, being linked to on hundreds of websites spanning from Digg to Fark to MSNBC. Several journalists interviewed me about the day, including live radio and television interviews. I was also interviewed by a journalist at the Washington Post. A Myspace spokeswoman even responded to the event.

Many of the people who linked and commented on my post agreed with me whole-heartedly: Myspace sucks. And to drive that message home, we’re finally disposing of our useless profile pages all together on one day.

So if you’ve deleted your Myspace page today, tell us about your experience in the comments section. Several people have emailed me over the last few days to tell me that they tried to delete their profiles only for the confirmation email never to be sent. If this happens to you, it’s a serious issue that Myspace needs to address. Please let us know about it.

If anyone needs to contact me about this day, you can email me at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com for more information.

Below is a list of steps for you to delete your profile. I already tried them on my own myspace page. Supposedly Myspace is supposed to delete it within 48 hours. We’ll see if that happens.

Now, the steps:

1. Log in at Myspace.com

2. Click on “account settings” next to your profile picture

3. Click on the “cancel account” link at the bottom of the screen

4. On this screen it tells you to confirm your cancellation. It also provides you a box to explain why you’re canceling your account. To really drive home the message, you should put “Because it’s International Delete Your Myspace Account Day” as your reason. That will let them know that you’re deleting the account because of the cause.

5. You should receive an email that will allow you to “confirm” (hey, didn’t I already “confirm” it like two clicks ago? Myspace sure doesn’t want me to leave) your cancellation. After you’ve once again confirmed it, it tells you to give it 48 hours to complete the cancellation.

6. If your profile doesn’t disappear in 48 hours, raise bloody hell.

Good luck everyone! Happy cancellation!

–Simon

UPDATE: New Matilda has published a feature article about the event.

UPDATE 2: Here’s a video clip from one television news station that covered the event. Here is the story done by the Washington Post.

UPDATE 3: Another TV news station does a report about International Delete Your Myspace Account Day. (The video is on the righthand side)

UPDATE 4: News.com, the publication that had the response from the Myspace spokeswoman, has published a follow-up article after interviewing me. It includes an additional non-response from Myspace.

By now, many people know that several advertisers have removed themselves from Savage Nation, the radio show for right-wing host Michael Savage.

Brave New Films launched a website at nosavage.org to highlight his anti-Musilim rhetoric and put pressure on his advertisers to cease from supporting him. So far, at least five major companies have pulled their advertising.

The organization also posted a Youtube video showing some brief clips of his more controversial statements. As you may know, Youtube — in addition to its regular commenting feature — also allows its users to upload video responses.

This is how I came across the hilarious video embedded bellow. A user called elijahmi2 decided he wanted to come to Savage’s defense and prove that Muslims really are as bad as Savage says they are. It pretty much speaks for itself, but make sure you stick around until the end to see elijahmi2 lie about tell his story of how he was attacked by a group of angry Muslims who tried to force him to convert, only to run with broken noses, black eyes, and their tails between their legs. This is comedy gold!

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Related posts:
1. Why doesn’t blogger Jon Swift support WGA writers?
2. News producer calls cops on charity mascot

So I have three scheduled interviews coming up.

Tonight at 9 p.m. EST I’ll be calling in live to Sirius Satellite Radio’s show “DeVore and Diana” on Maxim Radio (Sirius 108). The producer pitched the show to me as “Regis and Kelly on crack.”

Um, ok.

Tomorrow at 8 a.m. EST I’m calling in live to “The Dick Dale Show” in Kansas City. Unfortunately the producer for that one didn’t have any catchy pitch to describe what I’m walking into.

On Wednesday at like 10:30 a.m. I’ll be calling into a tv show called “Art Fennell Reports” — the producer said it was a news show. They were originally going to try to get me behind a video camera at a local station, but we couldn’t figure out a place close, so I’m just calling into it and they’ll flash a picture of me up.

I’m not sure what to expect — if any of these hosts are going to come at me with a splintered baseball bat or if they’ll mainly be supportive. “DeVore and Diana” says in its description that “John loves calling bull@#! on stuck up bastards, and Diana’s a multi-talented hottie with an angel’s voice and a dirty twinkle in her eye.”

I guess we’ll find out if I fit into the “stuck-up bastards” category.

Geez, I didn’t realize that I had let so many of these pile up without posting them. Anyway, here are some media-related links for your amusement:

1. I don’t know how many people know this, but media organizations love political seasons because there’s a huge influx of paid political advertising that go into them. Not just with political candidates, but also special interest groups. Unfortunately for newspapers, presidential candidates stick mainly to radio and television advertisements. But it looks like this year the internet is going to get a sizeable chunk of that ad revenue.

2. On a related note, internet ad revenue is expected to hit $50 billion by 2011.

3. In a world in which phone calls, faxes, emails and websites are easily-used research tools, is journalism suffering because journalists no longer need to visit the locale on which they’re reporting? Media Shift explores this issue.

4. The New York Times has a cool profile of a military blogger who has embedded himself in Iraq.

5. I’ve never heard of Josh Harris, but then again I was just a kid in the 90s. Whoever he is, he’s trying to make a comeback.

6. Although I enjoy reading Digg and subscribe to its RSS feed — I’ve also made it onto its front page twice — I long-ago stopped caring whether my site every gets linked on it. Too many people try to game it; friending and networking and all sorts of silly tactics to try to get on its front page. It really is a sad sight to see so many bloggers write about the best way to make it onto the front page. The irony of it all is that a reader wrote in to me to tell me Bloggasm seems to have been banned from being submitted on Digg — something I find humorous considering how many people who aren’t banned who are actively trying to game it. Anyway, to address this gaming problem, Digg creators have once again changed the super secret algorithm to try and stop said gaming.

7. “An Afghan court on Tuesday sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that three judges said violated the tenets of Islam.” This is a US-backed government in a country we’re currently occupying. Surely the US can do something to reverse this?

8. Note to Fox News guests: Don’t go on television and start ranting about a video game you haven’t played or know nothing about, or else the internet will pwn you.

9. Mashable has a cool post about the nightmare that the internet has caused for PR companies. I wrote a similar post awhile back titled When viral marketing backfires. Mashable lists International Delete Your Myspace Account Day as one of its examples.

10. It’s always interesting when authors turn down book prizes. Do they do it because it essentially doubles the publicity for the book? In light of the Oprah/Franzen debacle, forgive me for being a skeptic.

11. Jon Stewart vs Jonah Goldberg.

12. I’m a 42-year-old gay man with a superhero fetish

13. An article arguing that female stars like Spears and Hilton get piled on by the press while male stars, who are experiencing similar downward spirals (Heath Ledger) get ignored until after the downfall has reached its end.

14. Daniel Schorr, a 91-year-old NPR commentator, tells bloggers to get off his lawn. He then turns to the journalist interviewing him and says, “Where are my pants?”

15. The Columbia Journalism Review was among the first to bring up the idea of government subsidizing journalism. Now Tech Crunch picks up the torch.

(Updated below)

For those who don’t know, Editor and Publisher is one of the leading trade publications that covers the newspaper industry. After I published my article titled “Is journalist burnout on the rise?” I forwarded the link to Editor and Publisher in case they wanted to write about it.

The result?

Today, a reporter there decided to pen an article about the study. Though some of the facts came directly from the study itself, many of the facts reported were lifted directly from my article — facts that came from my interview with the professor in question.

Was I given any credit for my reporting? None at all. It’s presented in such a way as if the reporter had gathered those facts herself. And this is a publication that is supposed to cover journalism ethics.

Gee thanks, Editor and Publisher. I’ll sure remember this the next time I think about giving you a news tip.

If you’d like to email Editor and Publisher to comment on its journalism practices, contact them at letters@editorandpublisher.com. The email address for the editor is gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com

UPDATE: It looks as if the publication updated its article to include this:

This is just the beginning of Reinardy’s studies about journalist burnout, he told bloggasm’s Simon Owens. Reinardy intends to conduct a series of studies about the trend, starting with in depth interviews of 100 journalists about their dissatisfaction with their jobs.

My fellow coworker Joel forwarded me an email from the editor saying that he would get on it right away. It was an honest mistake.

For the record, I’m a loyal reader of Editor and Publisher and regularly link to its articles.

(Updated below)

You’re a newspaper journalist. Your editor doesn’t care that your sources won’t call back, she needs that story by 10 p.m. You rarely get to see your kids before they go to bed because that government meeting you’re covering drags on until late at night. You file a story about a complicated issue and you just know the next day some expert is going to call in and point out how you got the story wrong. You get crazy people calling in daily demanding you to write a story about such-and-such or accusing you of having a bias.

But worst of all, you do all this with the understanding that you’re being tremendously underpaid.

These are just some of the reasons that newspaper journalists gave in a recent study for why they intend to leave the industry.

Dr. Scott Reinardy, a 43-year-old professor with Ball State University, was sitting in a doctoral seminar class in the fall of 2003 when he started thinking about the stresses sports writers experience.

“Because sports is so intense, sports journalists would hear it from fans, coaches, players and their sports editor,” Reinardy told me earlier this week. “They all wanted something, and sometimes it led to combative situations. I started thinking in terms of post-traumatic stress, but there was no trauma. And, it’s hard to argue that covering ball games and eating pressbox food creates a great deal of stress, although the high-fat, high-sodium food can have adverse physical effects.”

For 15 years he had worked as a sports writer and editor for five daily papers, so he knew the hardships of newspaper journalism. In 2005 the Center for Disease Control listed journalism as the seventh most stressful job in the US, but Reinardy wanted to know if this led to journalists falling victim to burnout, a trend that would cause many to leave the profession.
***

Dr. Scott Reinardy worked for five daily newspapers and knew firsthand the stress of being a journalist.

***

So in early 2007, the professor sent emails to 1,452 U.S. daily newspapers explaining his study and requesting the staff e-mail lists of their full-time newspaper employees. After emailing all the contact addresses that were given to him, he was able to get 770 journalists to fill out an online survey.

Implementing something called the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey, which was developed to measure the rate of burnout among professionals not working in human services, Reinardy tried to examine whether age, job title, and newspaper circulation would affect journalist job burnout.

The results he received from the study were interesting. The average income of respondents was $48,493, and the average journalist was 41.6 years old with 17.8 years of journalism experience. The majority of the respondents were reporters, followed by news editors, copy editors, executive editors and photographers.

“When the journalists were asked if they had intentions to leave newspaper journalism, 25.7 percent answered ‘yes’ and 36.2 percent answered ‘don’t know,’” the study states. “…Further examination reveals that 31 percent of young journalists (34 and younger) expressed intentions to leave the profession, and 43.5 percent answered ‘don’t know.’”

When those who said they wanted to leave the profession were asked why, “36 percent said money or salary was the reason, 27 percent said hours or schedule and 19 percent said stress or burnout. Also, a reference to family life was mentioned in 13 percent of the responses.”

After the study was completed, Reinardy concluded that though newspaper journalists had a high level of cynicism about their professions, they only had moderate rates of exhaustion and professional efficacy. And of the different job titles, copy editors at smaller papers experienced the highest level of burnout.

But where do all these journalists go? Are they moving out of the field completely or just moving on to other kinds of journalism? I posed these questions to Reinardy in my interview with him.

“Those intending to leave indicate that they will freelance, enter public relations, move into academia or return to school to advance their education in another area,” he replied. “Those are the primary answers. It’s really a mixed bagged, but the fact remains that there is a substantial percentage who intend to get out.”

He further speculated that many might try their hands at online media, and that those who do want to move away from newspapers but remain in the media have plenty of opportunities elsewhere.

But this is just the first in a series of studies that Reinardy intends to conduct. He said that his next move will be to interview 100 journalists at length to dive into the intricate reasons for why they’re so tired and dissatisfied with their jobs.

“My goal is to develop a management strategy that will address this issue,” he said. “Of course, there is not one-size-fits-all solution. Each organization has drastically different problems. But my research indicates that there are similarities that can be addressed. For now, I’m primarily interested in creating awareness about the issues troubling newspaper journalists. Quite honestly, the solutions will evolve from the industry. I hear the skeptics saying, ‘Yeah, right. newspaper publishers have no interest in saving their employees.’ Well, to some degree that may be true, but there will be a breaking point when product quality greatly diminishes profits. When that happens, perhaps management will realize that the news worker needs to be as valued as the stock holders. Perhaps I’m an optimist but what’s the alternative?”

UPDATE: Editor and Publisher directly rips off this article and presents it as if they gathered the facts on their own.