On Inconsequential Things That Matter To Me (Premium Edition)

1. What Are You Waiting For?

 In the interest of testing the Internet's ability to coddle reactionary extremists, I was watching North Carolina bumble its way to a third straight defeat last night, and I thought to myself, "I wonder if anyone's started up a campaign to Fire Roy Williams yet?" Surprisingly enough, the movement has not picked up much momentum, though I am encouraged by this potentially ironic Facebook page (Population: Four). Mostly, I came across a bunch of disgruntled Cowboys fans with nowhere else to go.
On a related note, this site appears to have lost its moorings, proving that Joe Paterno will even outlive the Internet.

2. Jeff Jarvis, King of the (Free) World

 Here is Mr. Internet Journalism Visionary's reaction to the notion that The New York Times will take the radical step of charging its readers a small amount of money for a product that costs millions of dollars to produce:
So why charge your best customers?
Yes, he said that. Because charging customers, especially loyal customers, has proven the bane of capitalism for millions of years. Nobu thrives on the notion of providing its best customers black cod gratis; Citibank would not imagine charging the investment accounts of millionaires. And as usual, Jarvis buoys his argument by somehow setting Internet journalism into its own special category, by falling into the usual mumbo-jumbo about the link economy and about "content" being a "magnet" that can create "relationships of value," proving once again that he knows far more than I ever could about Internet metrics, which allows him, and only him, to defy common sense, and makes me the idiot for alienating people who want everything digital to be free.
Now I'll walk to my favorite bodega to steal a six pack of Coca-Cola.

3. Quarterback Angst

Say what you will about Fountains of Wayne--and certainly, the sheer ubiquity of Stacy's Mom was worthy of a lengthy ostracism from society--but you cannot deny that this is the best song ever written about the inner monologue of a quarterback. Just as Friday Night Lights has the ability to emotionally manipulate certain people I know to the verge of tears, this song does the same for me. Seriously: I heard it on the subway this afternoon, and I immediately thought of Mark Sanchez, and in that instant I became a Jets fan. I cannot explain what it is, except that it captures a moment of physical and spiritual enlightenment in a deceptively simple way. It makes me yearn to witness the manifestation of greatness.
Also, I love football far too much.

On Journalism and the Future, Part 583,482

It's true, I'm sick, and it's true that there are few things I despise more than the inescapable misery of the common cold. But really, Jeff Jarvis has become one of those things. See, I realize we are on the verge of a transformation in the way our business works, and I understand that there are many unanswered questions about the future, but there remains to me one fundamental, unassailable journalistic principle, and that is the the notion that we tell stories. This is what we do; this remains, to me, the only noble reason to enter this business. Last week, the venerable Dave Kindred wrote a very complimentary column about my friend and colleague Wright Thompson; Wright is great journalist because Wright is, at heart, a great storyteller. That's Kindred's point, and that...unbelievably...is what Jeff Jarvis is now calling into question.

This lone blog post should quash any credibility Jarvis has as a knowledgeable commentator on our craft. This lone blog post proves that people like Jarvis can drone on all they want about platform and structure and Google and Twitter and information yearning to be free, but they don't understand the fundamental nature of our business, the one unimpeachable truth that separates us from the algorithms and the aggregators: Nothing will ever replace the value of a story, well-told.

And anyone who believes otherwise is simply not a journalist.

On Tiger Woods, Ashton Kutcher and the Future

I'm thinking more about this Tiger Woods thing, and tonight I found myself reading the blog of a self-proclaimed media guru whose ideas I continue to find utterly repulsive, Jeff Jarvis, who I cannot seem to resist, and who is currently speculating on what a "post-page, post-site, post-media media world" will look like.* And what he describes sounds, to me, like an episode of Entertainment Tonight, if Mary Hart was a programmable robot: He details a world in which the Twitter account of a British actor named Stephen Fry is, in fact, our future. Now, you may remember Stephen Fry from such films as "Paddington Bear: The Early Years" and the television show "Woof!", but Jeff Jarvis sees Stephen Fry and his gadflyish Twitter feed--as well as Ashton Kutcher, whose mere mention should be a klaxon warning in itself-- as a glimpse of our streamlined, personalized future.

Now, I have nothing personal against Stephen Fry--I am, in fact, one of the few people in America who is not related to a Wachowski brother and will publicly defend the movie adaptation of "V for Vendetta"--but I should establish that I find Stephen Fry's notions about Twitter to be bloody ridiculous. According to this article, Fry believes that Twitter has essentially revolutionized communication in the same way the printing press has. He believes that it has cut out the middleman, and that it has allowed celebrities to communicate directly with the public without answering any actual questions about themselves, which--to bring us back to the original thread of this thought--is what Tiger Woods has been doing for a decade, long before Twitter existed. And that's the problem: Without the middleman, we are exposing ourselves to an ever more santized version of the truth. Without the middleman, we are subject to the whims of celebrities (and, more important, power brokers and politicians) who are acting entirely out of self-interest. Which means, according to Jeff Jarvis, that self-interest and self-promotion is an essential part of the future of news. And this, in his mind, is a good thing, because our news will be personalized according to the "tricks" we, as journalists, "can bring to bear."** And this is what we should be embracing--a world in which Tiger Woods and his manufactured persona are able to fully dictate the terms of their own news "stream," even more so than he already can. A world in which the truth is ever more narrow, and ever more subjective.

*I imagine it looks a lot like Sheboygan after dark.

**Question: How do I know exactly what news I want in my stream, Jarvis? I listen to Pandora; sometimes, a song I've never heard before pops into my stream. Sometimes, that song may be the best one I've heard all day. Aren't your ideas, if manifested, breeding an ever narrower and disinterested public? Or are such things beyond the purview of both you and Ashton Kutcher?