Journalism

Judge

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Karen Traviss’s Wess’har Wars series has finally reached a conclusion with Judge. Without giving away too much, I think it reasonable to say that it doesn’t end the way you might expect it to, and that’s probably a good thing, even though it might make Judge the weakest book in the series. I’m still not sure whether I like the ending, but that’s another matter entirely.

Meanwhile Karen can’t resist having a go at the state of modern journalism. Here’s the view from Eddie:

As he concentrated on the green rally, he watched a reporter doing a vox pop in the crowd. Whatever a reporter was these days, he had no idea: some wannabe twat gagging to do the job for free or even pay for the privilege, just to get some reassurance that they existed by seeing themselves permanently recorded in some news archive, so they’d be somebody. Next week, they’d be back serving donuts. When did reporting get to be about the reporter? In his day, it had still been about the story, outward-looking, inquiring; now it was a karaoke night.

Eddie, of course, is a 20th Century journalist. Times move on. I must admit that I was rather impressed by Karen’s idea that in the future news channels won’t bother making news themselves, they will just upload whatever “citizen journalists” send them, and then have the audience vote as to which stories they think are true. In the future, the Weekly World News will be recognized for the ground-breaking pioneer of new journalism that it actually was.

Hugo Press Coverage

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Chris Barkley in the Denvention 3 press office tells me that National Public Radio is looking to do interviews with Hugo winners after the ceremony on Saturday. This is excellent news.

Meanwhile I am slightly disappointed at the lack of reaction I am seeing to Sam Jordison’s article on the Guardian book blog. Fandom has been complaining for ever that the mainstream media doesn’t care about us, and now we get a preview of the Hugos in a national newspaper and no one says anything. Get on over there and say “thank you”, people, and let The Guardian know that covering science fiction gets them readers.

Pay Per Click?

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Still on the subject of online journalism, Tim Anderson ponders whether freelance journalists will soon be paid based on the number of unique visits their work receives. Actually I suspect it is already happening. A freelancer who has a long term contract might be fairly comfortable, but if you have to sell each article to your editor (which I believe the folks on the Guardian Book Blog do) then I’m pretty sure that the number of visits your previous posts got, and the number of comments on those posts, will be taken into account when you propose a new column.

Is this a good thing? Well, I’m always happy to be paid by results, provided that I’m happy doing what needs to be done to get those results. Tim says:

If writers are paid per view, clearly they will have more incentive to do such things. Best tread carefully though. Link seeding done badly is spamming. Encouraging comments done badly is trolling.

And therein lies the problem, because guess what gets the most traffic for your blog?

Well, yes, taping bacon to your cat. But beyond that, controversial posts aimed at winding people up tend to get far more traffic than a calm, reasoned and well-researched argument. It is a difficult line to tread. Tabloid newspapers have already proved the point. At some point I think you have to say, “I don’t care about the money, I don’t want to have to write like that just to get traffic.” Which, of course, is why I don’t make any money out of blogging.

Newpaper Silliness

~ Cheryl

“Another US obstacle on Britons crossing Atlantic” screams the headline in The Independent. Except that this is not a new story. I reported on it over a month ago. And, as the article goes on to explain, the new regulations are actually going to make it easier for many British travelers, myself included. Still, in the absence of sex scandals involving members of the establishment, headlines about Evil Americans can always be relied upon to catch the eye.

If The Independent really wanted to talk about obstacles to visiting America, it might want to talk about the Mickey Tax instead.

RSS R US?

~ Cheryl

Interesting article here about the future of newspapers. Slowly but surely, people are starting to understand RSS, but it will take a very long time, I think, for established businesses to catch up.

Meta Conversation

~ Cheryl

A few links about the Internet, long tails and the like:

Megan’s piece cheered me up no end as I now feel a lot less guilty about not knowing who the modern music stars are. And danah’s perhaps explains why I steer clear of a lot of the flame wars these days.

Flames Over Middle Earth

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

It is now a well established theory of popular journalism that the best way to get lots of eye tracks for your web site is to get someone to write something manifestly stupid, and hopefully offensive, and then sit back and wait for the flame war to develop. I’ve been busy running economic models all morning, but the helpful Will Plant has pointed me at the latest exercise of this type over at The Guardian.

The basic plot is as follows: because some male persons have said unkind things about JK Rowling, this is proof positive that the literary world is dominated by Evil Male Critics who will stop at nothing in their tireless quest to put down everything ever written by women in the history of the universe, Evah! You can guess how the comment thread goes. This is, I’m afraid, one of those articles that will be quoted again and again when men want to prove what pathetic, selfish idiots feminists are.

On the plus side, it has given people the opportunity to mention a whole raft of wonderful women writers who might not otherwise have got their names in front of the great book-reading public. If it leads to a few book sales down the road that will be a good thing. I’m sure there are more names that could be dropped, if you fancy popping over there and can stomach the pile of righteous outrage in the comments.

What I can’t understand, though, is that there are people who are surprised at the description of the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings movies as a “big burning vagina”. Isn’t it obvious?

Petition Follow-Up

~ Cheryl

Those of you who read my post about psychiatric treatment of trans children may be interested in this article from a Toronto web site. Kenneth Zucker’s clinic is in Toronto, and the article was inspired by an NPR documentary comparing Zucker’s treatment with that of another gender specialist who practices acceptance of children’s beliefs about their gender. The journalist, Marc Lostracco, comes down pretty clearly against Zucker:

Many experts are now beginning to believe that allowing this identity to form early in a supportive environment could dodge much of the societal anxiety that comes with an intergendered identity. People like Zucker think it merely creates more transgendered people where there otherwise wouldn’t be as many, and because society doesn’t readily accept it, it’s a peg that therefore must be tamped down as soon as possible. This dangerous view also effectively normalizes the aforementioned schoolyard bullying, whilst demonizing gender-dissonant toys and innocent role play. If impulses can’t be smothered or denied, ostracism, mockery, and violence ultimately become part of the “treatment.”

However, he is also painfully aware of why people like Zucker are able to continue in practice:

Which then raises the question of what society finds more alarming—a kid who wishes to live quietly as the opposite gender, or 10-year-olds dishing out bloody street justice in a playground? Given the choice between the two, most parents would likely prefer their child to be the violent playground thug.

It is an excellent article, making the pain suffered by trans kids very obvious, but at the same time understanding why these things happen.

Indy Goes Morris

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today’s Independent has an article about pagans and Goths getting involved in Morris Dancing. My initial reaction to this was that it was going to be a hatchet job much like their treatment of Eastercon, and I have to admit that regardless of any other qualities of the article, I find it hard to take it seriously when it contains cheap shot lines like this:

“Look at it coming up,” says a female voice, and she’s not talking about her partner’s big stick: the sun is beginning to burn orange through heavy grey clouds on the horizon.

Having said that, the rest of it doesn’t look too bad, and I’m pleased to see that there appear to be Morris groups that are actually engaging with what they do and trying to make something modern and vibrant out of it rather than simply looking back on ancient traditions. (This is the neo-pagan in me coming out, can you tell?) I particularly like this comment:

There are radical politics at work too: he sees the dance, and “neo-pagan carnivals” such as the Rochester Sweeps, as a way of resisting the “complacent nostalgia” of Englishness “founded on the detritus of imperialism, Christianity, racism and xenophobia”. His England has more primitive, inclusive roots, and for him the morris is a way of expressing that.

The “he” in this case being Philip Kane, founder of the Wolfshead and Vixen Morris side. His is a sort of Englishness that I think I can get along with (though goodness only knows what some of my American friends will make of those blacked faces).