Al Weisel, the real person behind the pseudonym of satirical blogger Jon Swift, has sadly passed away. I’ve exchanged many emails with Jon over the years and have collaborated with him on several projects. I’ve always wondered who he really was, but I’m sad to find out this way.
Here are some Bloggasm posts that have featured Swift:
Where in the world is blogger Jon Swift? UPDATE: Possibly found?
The downside of the Googlebomb
Those who have advocated the release of free ebooks to boost print sales of book titles have been perennially dogged by arguments that they rely too heavily on the anecdote. That is, they tend to hype singular cases of success — the wayward example of a book’s sales rocketing after the viral spread of its ebook counterpart online — without considering the myriad of other factors that may have been involved.
John Hilton, a doctoral candidate in Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University whose interests focus on open education and open access, recognizes that there could never be a completely controlled study on the matter, but that hasn’t hindered him in collecting as much data as possible. Hilton coauthored a study recently published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing titled “The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales,” for which he examined Bookscan sales for dozens of print titles before and after they were released online for free.
For those who support this method of publishing, the results are encouraging yet not altogether conclusive. Hilton studied 41 titles, limiting his research only to print books that had been on the market for a minimum of eight weeks before a free ebook was released. This way, he could measure the sales prior and after the ebook and compare them. However, not all 41 titles were released in the same exact way. For instance, there were several Tor titles that were only released for a week and only to those who signed up for Tor’s online newsletter.
This distinction is important, because the Tor titles were the only group to see a significant drop in sales after the release of the ebook.
“Why were the results from Tor so different from the others?” the study’s authors write. “This question cannot be answered with certainty. The only thing we know is that Tor’s model of making the books available for one week only and requiring registration in order to download the book was substantially different from the models used to create free versions of the other books we studied.”
Of course, as Hilton pointed out to me in a phone interview, just because those specific Tor books saw a decrease didn’t mean that the publisher didn’t benefit from their release. For instance, the ebooks lured thousands to sign up for its online newsletter, which it could then use to promote future books. There was also anecdotal evidence that a free ebook would boost sales of other books by that same author, especially if the released-ebook was part of an ongoing series.
“Of course the big elephant in the room is that whatever it’ll be today, it’ll be different three years from now, maybe even three months from now,” Hilton told me. “As people get more iPads, or something like a Kindle takes over, all of this could drastically change.”
Those who have advocated free ebooks sometimes argue that people inherently don’t like reading longer works on a screen, so they would sometimes buy a print title after sampling it online. But this new generation of e-readers are designed to be read just like dead-tree books, adding a new dynamic to the mix. If ebooks themselves become a valuable commodity, why give them away for free?
Of course, sales are not the only factor involved.
“Think of the educational benefit of making this resource available,” he said. “I think there’s a huge benefit to society by making something available for free. Recently I’ve been involved with another study with my dissertation, and this studied just eight books, and over a few week time these books were downloaded over 100,000 times, and sales increased moderately. But the point wasn’t whether sales increased or decreased; here are 100,000 people who accessed works who otherwise wouldn’t have. So my hope would be that this study would relieve people’s fears that if they put books online for free their sales would tank, and they’d say, ‘let’s think about a more global benefit to having your works online for free.’”
Though Hilton will graduate in the spring, he intends to replicate his research in the future, hopefully as a university professor.
“I think the key would just to be to have more titles,” he said. “We did 41 in this study which I felt was pretty good … but if you could see hundreds, or 500 books over a longer period of time — we had eight weeks on either side, what would have happened if we had 16 weeks on either side? The other key thing I think is missing is not knowing how many people downloaded the book. So we don’t know if 100,000 people downloaded the Random House books and 100 people downloaded the Tor books. That would account for the difference.”
The problem thus far is that most publishers have dabbled with free ebooks only haphazardly, and don’t publicly release much data that might shed light on future studies. Such unknowns will likely give the dissenters plenty of ammo, especially as several corporate battles on the issue of ebooks — Google Books, iPad, and Kindle, to name just a few — heat up.
It’s become well established by now that news aggregators — blogs and social news sites that link to off-site content — have enormous influence. There have been countless articles about the power of Matt Drudge and how his links and headlines drive discussion. There are sites and studies that document which domains that Matt Drudge and social news site Digg link to most often.
But what about Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit? The site receives on average over half a million page views a day and can send so called “instalaunches,” surges of traffic that result in thousands of new readers via a single link. Many other bloggers and journalists read his site and it’s not uncommon for a linked item to receive wider coverage elsewhere. Though it’s widely known that Reynolds often links to conservative sites, he’s thought of by many to be much closer to the center than most right-wing bloggers (he would probably label himself a libertarian).
I originally set out to document which website domains Reynolds links to most often over a month-long period, but quickly discovered that his website only lets you click backward about three pages before it no longer offers the “previous entries” button. Instead, I had to settle for only four days of data, but even this relatively small data set was fascinating.
Over a period of four days spanning from February 23 to Feb. 26, Reynolds published a total of 287 links to 144 separate domains. In that small space of time, there were 26 domains that he linked to three times or more.
The two domains he linked to most often — Amazon.com (22) and Pajamasmedia.com (19) — aren’t surprising; Amazon has a referral system that allows Reynold to get a cut out of every click-through sale and Pajamas Media hosts his own blog. PJTV.com — also a Pajamas Media outlet — received a high number of links as well.
Of those domains that received three or more links, many of them were right-wing, but a few weren’t, including BoingBoing (9), Autoblog (3), New Scientist (3), Popsci.com (4), Popular Mechanics (4), Slate (3), and others. As is evident from the above list, though many Instapundit links are political in nature, he also often links to non-political stories — usually tech articles.
Below is a breakdown of all the domains Reynolds linked to three times or more:
Amazon.com — 22
pajamasmedia.com — 19
boingboing.net — 9
hotair.com — 8
reason.com — 8
althouse.blogspot.com — 7
pjtv.com — 7
jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com — 5
youtube.com — 5
corner.nationalreview.com — 4
dailycaller.com — 4
futurepundit.com — 4
popsci.com — 4
popularmechanics.com — 4
thedailybeast.com — 4
thefrisky.com– 4
legalinsurrection.blogspot.com — 3
slate.com — 3
taxprof.typepad.com — 3
technologyreview.com — 3
newscientist.com — 3
powerlineblog.com — 3
autoblog.com — 3
volokh.com — 3
washingtonexaminer.com — 3
weeklystandard.com — 3
Chez Pazienza woke up one morning earlier this month and found an email from Andrew Breitbart — Matt Drudge protege, founder of Breitbart.com and other right-wing news sites — waiting for him in his inbox. He was immediately suspicious of its authenticity; the email was riddled with typos, devoid of capitalization, and apparently mailed at 3:30 in the morning.
“I went and checked the email address to see if it was him, because my first thought was, ‘why the hell would he bother with me?’” he told me in a recent phone interview.
The email responded to a post Pazienza had written on his blog, Deus Ex Malcontent, referencing a Salon article that had accused James O’Keefe, the ACORN-punking “pimp” that Breitbart has invested serious time and money in promoting, of being a racist. The Deus Ex Malcontent post wasn’t particularly critical of Breitbart or O’Keefe — it simply opined that whether O’Keefe was a racist was irrelevant because both sides of the political divide had already made up their minds — but that didn’t stop Breitbart from treating it as if it was.
“you’re insinuation that james is a racist is equally egregious,” Breitbart wrote. “does it ever dawn on you that we conservatives can’t fathom how lefties can’t see how horrible their social policies have turned out to be for poor and minorities.”
The 3:30 a.m. email bizarrely ended with a reference to the movie Footloose.
“It was weird, it caught me off guard,” Pazienza told me. “I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what Breitbart would want with me.”
But this kind of Breitbart-launched offensive is nothing new or out-of-the-ordinary. While much attention has been given to the conservative’s attacks on traditional media outlets –through his Big Government site, interviews on MSNBC, and speeches at CPAC — he has been actively and aggressively going after bloggers and social media users who criticize him, a trend that has only intensified as more and more controversies surround James O’Keefe III in the wake of his arrest in Louisiana.
“There’s no question that when O’Keefe got busted trying to tamper with a US senator’s phone, it kind of freaked Breitbart out,” Brad Friedman, who owns the progressive Brad Blog, told me. Friedman has been on the forefront of reporting on issues and revelations surrounding O’Keefe, including the recent bombshell that the young conservative never actually dressed as a pimp when he went into ACORN offices, a fact that even Breitbart has been forced to acknowledge. He has also been a frequent recipient of the conservative’s scorn, especially via @ replies on his Twitter account. At one point he even jokingly suggested that Friedman should be subjected to capital punishment.
“We’re his only threat,” Friedman said, referring to progressive bloggers. He cited the New York Times’ reluctance to offer retractions for its erroneous reporting on O’Keefe’s pimp outfit as an example of the traditional media’s hesitation to go after Breitbart. “[The mainstream media's] scared to death of him, because they don’t know how to stand up to bullies. And Breitbart is a bully, make no mistake … Unfortunately, the progressive blogosphere and the readers who write letters to the [Times'] public editor, demanding a correction, we’re the only threat to Breitbart.”
Lately, Breitbart has been increasingly retweeting links from his detractors, links that often lead to blog posts and articles that are critical of him. Though he doesn’t offer commentary with the retweet, his followers often do so for him. Pazienza, for instance, was surprised one day when he received a flurry of angry @ replies from Breitbart’s followers after the conservative had tweeted a link to a Deus Ex Malcontent post critical of his Big Hollywood site.
“The thing about him beating up on little people on Twitter, that’s not new,” said Tommy Christopher, a correspondent for Mediaite. Chistopher was one of several bloggers who engaged in heated debates with Breitbart during CPAC. He recalled an incident several months ago in which Breitbart retaliated against a Twitter user who had bashed him by posting personal information about her and making vaguely threatening statements. “I spoke to him for like three hours that night, and he got really worked up about it. At the end he admitted that he stepped over the line a little bit, but this is something he does. When people attack him, he basically fights back just as hard.”
Christopher attributed much of Breitbart’s aggressiveness to “paranoia,” something that runs so deep that he’ll lash out at even the smallest criticism, even if it’s coming from someone who doesn’t have much of an audience.
“He’s definitely heaviliy invested in ACORN and O’Keefe and obviously in the outcome of whatever happens to O’Keefe in Louisiana. He has definitely racheted up the belligerence, because he stepped up with the intensity of the attacks. The encounter we had in the hotel [at CPAC] was quite a bit different than any time I’ve intereacted with him in the past.”
Of course, it hasn’t escaped me that this article I’m currently writing isn’t exactly flattering to Breitbart, so forgive me if I indulge in my own paranoia for a moment:
What will happen if and when he reads it?
Last weekend, Bil Browning received an email from John Aravosis, a gay activist and blogger for AMERICAblog. Aravosis and other bloggers were organizing something called a “blog swarm,” an attempt to essentially create a firehose of public outcry aimed at a single target: the Human Rights Campaign, considered by many to be the most influential LGBT lobbying group. With over 700,000 members, the organization wields significant power, a clout that extends into the White House and Congress.
And, according to those who participated in the blog swarm yesterday, this clout has not been put to good use, specifically in how much pressure it has placed on President Obama to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. “HRC may argue that it’s already told the President it would like to see DADT repealed this year,” Aravosis wrote in his post announcing the swarm. “Well, that’s not enough.”
“I think it’s always a good idea, especially as bloggers and community journalists, to keep our own organizations on the right path,” Browning, who runs the LGBT blog The Bilerico Project, told me in a phone interview. He said that the goal of the project was to create a flood of communication — phone calls, emails, blog posts, and articles — aimed at HRC to convince them that more firm action should be taken on DADT.
Citizen journalists using the web to funnel outrage to a small, influential group of individuals have had mixed results in the past. While a campaign organized by Color of Change recently led to several sponsors reneging their support for far-right extremist Glenn Beck, a similar campaign launched by the popular Consumerist blog aimed at NBC execs did not stop the company from letting go Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien.
Browning told me that their cause was aided by the fact that several more mainstream liberal blogs — outside of the LGBT-specific niche — had joined in on the swarm. “I think we’re all part of a larger progressive community and I think one of the problems that we’ve had in the LGBT organization, is that we haven’t reached out to the allies who write about labor, heath care reform, immigration reform,” he said. “There are a lot of areas that affect LGBT people too, but we just seem to be kind of off on our own working on our own thing. It can’t keep going on, and this is a good example where working in a coalition with other progressive blogs and organizations works.”
Those non-LGBT blogs range from Daily Kos to Taylor Marsh, and since the blog swarm launched yesterday, dozens of bloggers and hundreds of Twitter and Facebook users have joined in, indicating a critical mass in which the momentum of the swarm became self-perpetuating.
It has been a little over 24 hours since the swarm launched, and already the HRC has issued responses, mainly defending itself. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has to be repealed this year,” a spokesman told POLITICO. “That has been the Human Rights Campaign’s position from the start, and at this point there is no one in the White House who does not know it … We have been lobbying the White House relentlessly, and we’ve seen more movement in recent weeks than in the previous 16 years.”
So while the HRC may not necessarily be promising a change in strategy, they certainly are listening, and as expected the blog swarm is in effect spilling over into the mainstream media and adding to the national conversation. Sometimes, it’s not just about influencing a single organization, but bringing once-private discussions out into the open. Given the recent drove of news reports about increased pressure to repeal DADT, these bloggers could not have picked a better time to turn up the heat.
“I am not all bad,” writes the Twitter handle @demonsheep. “For instance, I enjoy flying kites. Kites made from the skin, bones and sinew of small children.”
The account issued its first tweet about 20 hours ago, shortly after the launch of the now Internet-famous Demon Sheep ad created by the Carly Fiorina campaign. In that time it’s amassed over 850 followers and is quickly growing. Quite frankly, it’s hilarious.
The account is run by a 30-year-old conservative named Shayne Rivers. The Twitter user, who also runs his own personal account, works in health care, though he said he didn’t want to divulge too much information about himself.
“When the Carly ad exploded on Twitter, one of my followers, @rjhornsby, snatched up the @demonsheep username,” Rivers told me via email. “He asked @leonwolf, a blogger at RedState.com, to help him manage it. In turn, @leonwolf recruited me(@knifework), and the three of us started mocking Demon Sheep to the best of our ability. We had over 300 followers in under 7 hours. The fact that the #demonsheep hashtag started trending on Twitter did not hurt.”
Rivers said that all three of the people involved with the account are conservatives.
“And as conservatives, we are skeptical of all politicians and don’t mind mocking any of them…no matter their political affiliations.”
Bloggasm is a blog run by Simon Owens that focuses on the media, with an emphasis on online media and journalism. It often features interviews with prominent bloggers, authors and journalists. If you want to request an interview, just drop us a line.
simon.bloggasm@gmail.com
