Bloggasm

Well, I got linked to today by conservative blogger Michelle Malkin and never have I seen such vitriolic hateful email. I feel sorry for political bloggers who get linked by her regularly.

Here are some media-related links for your amusement:

1. A sports blogger who up until recently used a pseudonym outed himself as a Washington Post reporter. He was promptly fired.

2. Here’s a step by step list on how to make your own Judd Apatow movie. If this formula is correct, then he only has about five more movies left before he has run out of Freaks and Geeks cast members to star in his films.

3. While much of the news coverage of Craigslist has focused on the damage it has caused to the newspaper industry, another competitor has decided that it won’t take it sitting down — Ebay has filed a lawsuit against the free classifieds site.

4. Every time you think cable news couldn’t get any worse, you come across a news clip like this one and realize that there is no limit to its vapidity.

This is my first night getting home at a reasonable hour since Monday. I start nights like these with an overly ambitious to-do list and then it’s three hours later and I’m watching Youtube videos while eating oatmeal. So much for productivity.

Here are some media-related links for your amusement:

1. Romenesko gets the award for quote of the week: “”60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt told a lunch crowd in Seattle that he once told Dan Rather to sock Abraham Zapruder in the mouth, “grab his film” recording the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, make a copy, apologize to him and then give it back. Hewitt said he called Rather back to nix the plan.”

2. Hypocrite sighting. Fox promotes a new film that is sympathetic to the immigrant experience and in the preview makes several jabs at CNN’s Lou Dobbs for his anti-illegal immigrant stance. But given that Fox News is a right-wing breeding ground of immigrant hatred, I’m surprised that they didn’t take the opportunity to engage in some cross promotion.

3. Maxim publisher, Felix Dennis, told a journalist that he once killed a man. But after reading about a thousand words of the profile you begin to trust this assertion less and less. Every journalist interviews someone like this once in awhile; a man so hyped on his own amazingness that he’ll shoot out every bullshit claim imaginable to try to shock and awe.

4. Remember the Craigslist hoax that resulted in an entire house being illegally looted? Well, the police nabbed the perpetrators by tracing the IP addresses through Craigslist. The internet wins again.

5. Here’s the first person account of a citizen journalism news room. While some might read this and feel inspired about the future of journalism, I react with a feeling of “bleh.” To me, this account boils down to “convince a bunch of amateurs to write mediocre copy for free and let you profit off it.” Why can’t citizen journalism result in all those amateurs starting their own individual blogs and creating the content themselves?

6. Venture Capitalists are apparently distraught because they can’t find enough websites to dump millions of dollars into. For some reason they’re upset they don’t get to create a new tech bubble of over-valued Web 2.0 companies.

7. Given my latest problems with Google, I’ve been of course thinking a lot about web traffic lately. Given that the internet is a form of media that is more measurable than any other, it’s odd that those measurements are so unscientific. Maybe this sheds light on how idiotic Nielsen and subscription numbers really are for other forms of media.

Whenever journalists speak of disseminating news in the online world, they’re usually referring to blogging, social networking, and other Web 2.0 technologies. What you don’t hear about very often are the millions of mass emails that are sent out on a daily basis — they’re sometimes referred to as “chain emails.” A person gets some kind of news item in his inbox and then forwards it to his entire address book. This allows a piece of information to be spread quickly to thousands of people without being formerly published online or in print.

Unfortunately, these mass emails provide an easy outlet for groups to widely promote propaganda and misinformation. Because there is no permalink or publication to trace it to, falsehoods can quickly be disseminated in such a way so that it’s almost impossible to trace the writing to its original source. And because the writing isn’t published anywhere — at least right away — it can float under the radar undetected by those knowledgeable or skeptical enough to cry foul while thousands of emails continue to be sent.

Eventually, readers start copy and pasting the emails into online message boards and blogs, but by then the misinformation has become so ubiquitous that it’s considered fact.

Philip Pullman, the author of The Golden Compass, which has been made into a major motion picture, has included anti-religious themes in his books. Naturally — as we saw with The Da Vinci Code — Christian groups have begun to form protests against it. Today, I received a mass-forwarded email from a Christian relative that quotes Pullman as saying this:

The Golden Compass, A movie you might want to avoid.

In the words of the author, “I want to kill God in the minds of Children…. I want them to decide against God and the Kingdom of Heaven.”

As you might have guessed, this is a quote that Pullman never actually said.

After hitting thousands of inboxes, this false quote eventually spilled over onto dozens of webpages. Notice that some of those sites are run by churches.

I meticulously went through every single direct reference to the quote, and never once does it cite a source. A few of these webpages claim that this quote came from a mysterious 2003 interview with the author, but we never actually find out where.

In fact, the only quote that Pullman actually said that comes close to this appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald:

“I’ve been surprised by how little criticism I’ve got. Harry Potter’s been taking all the flak. I’m a great fan of J.K. Rowling, but the people - mainly from America’s Bible Belt - who complain that Harry Potter promotes Satanism or witchcraft obviously haven’t got enough in their lives. Meanwhile, I’ve been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God.”

This, of course, is entirely different from the author saying “I want to kill God in the minds of Children.”

This email that was sent to me was CC’d to 20 other people. These chain messages typically fan out in a pyramid-like fashion. Because of this one email, thousands of people actually think that Pullman said those words. As for who actually falsely attributed them to him? We’ll never know.

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Though the arguments surrounding the Writers Guild of America strike are often complex and involve a good deal of number crunching and indepth knowledge of the DVD and online advertising market, one of the most salient demands that have made it into the media echo chamber is that writers want a cut of the profits made from the internet.

Many journalists, particularly newspaper journalists, have likely watched this debate with some interest. After all, we’re still having to figure out how to adapt to the online world ourselves, particularly when it comes to online advertising. Print advertising is shrinking, and though the online ad market is growing, it’s not quick enough. Not only that, but a good bit of it is getting sucked up by Google.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of media stories have pointed out already that the internet, the very thing being argued over, is helping to fuel support for the striking writers. They have unleashed a barrage of Youtube videos attacking the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, often employing the very writing skills that they use in their day jobs.

Part of the reason for this success is the low bar for entry: It costs very little to produce a six minute video and load it onto Youtube and then feed it through the appropriate channels. Imagine the WGA trying to do this with video tapes, the subject of the 1988 strike. The cost of production and distribution of video tapes would have been too costly to be effective.

So this leads us to the next logical step: If the internet is supposedly so profitable, and the cost for entry is so low, then why don’t some WGA members just bypass the producers completely and write solely for online content?

According to an AP article titled “Striking Writers Gravitate to Web,” some writers might do just that. “The operators of Internet entertainment sites such as MyDamnChannel, Break, Heavy and others have a message for striking writers - give us a look,” the article states. “Many writers are doing just that, with the hope of retaining total creative control over their work and collecting as much as half of all revenue - a potentially sweet deal compared to a typical TV gig.”

So now the AMPTP has a second problem to deal with in regards to the strike: Not only are they losing potential profits, they’re also losing potential talent. And the longer the WGA is on strike, the more writers who might try their hands at online video production.

Something tells me that this strike will not only have a strong effect on the television and movie industry, but the rise of professional online video content as well. Look out Video-of-a-Cute-Cat-in-a-Tree, the Big Guns have entered the saloon.

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This article has a cool behind-the-scenes look at the Australian porn industry, which evidently has been struggling up until now. A woman named Maxine Fensom thinks she can spark world-wide interest and has been flying in US filmmakers to help with her films.

First we have Hollywood. Then Bollywood. Now, Nollywood?

1.eBay Quietly Unveils New Classifieds Site For U.S: “Online auction powerhouse eBay is hoping you might want to advertise online, on its new site meant to rival the popular Craigslist. The Wall Street Journal says the U.S. version of the site, called Kijiji, has gone live.” EDITOR’S NOTE: Kijiji? WTF? Could they have found a more inane, hard-to-remember title for the website?

2. Voting Begins on USAToday.com For Simpsons’ Hometown: “Voting began today on the Web site of the USA Today newspaper for which of several Springfields will host the premiere of ‘The Simpsons Movie’ later this month.”

3. Gay Paper ‘Out & About’ Now Back In At Nashville Kroger Stores : “One month after Out & About Newspaper was removed from racks inside Nashville, Tenn.-area Kroger supermarkets, the regional gay and lesbian free weekly is coming back to some of the stores. In an announcement Monday, Kroger said DistribuTech, the free newspaper distribution company, had misinterpreted the supermarket chain’s policy against displaying free papers that promote specific religious, political or other agendas.”

4. Personal Traffic Alerts, With Made-to-Order Data: “For many people, getting away for a holiday means sitting in traffic while listening to staccato radio reports about rubbernecking delays and cascading backups. But during the next few days, as Americans extend their Fourth of July celebrations, tens of thousands of motorists around the country will receive up-to-the minute accident alerts and guidance on end runs around bottlenecks — without ever having to turn on a car radio.”

5. Can She Turn Yahoo Into, Well, Google?: A profile of Susan L. Decker, president of Yahoo.

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