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| Sunday, September 25, 2005 |
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Read THIS and try to see TV the same way again. Or even blogging. 
| | Three cheers for Jeff Parish president Aaron Broussard. He was a giant on "Meet the Press" this morning. Russert was trying to do his usual MO -- marshall a bunch of quotes and talking points that put a guest into an uncomfortable position; watch them squirm; torque it with one more quote; rinse, repeat. Broussard's emotion & heart put the lie to this sort of cold-blooded rhetorical exercise. |
| | The most useful media moments of the past month for me were Broussard's cris de couer, Nagin breaking down with Garland Robinette on WWL on that horrible Thursday night, and all the specific instances of suffering relayed by eyewitnesses and victims. They made the storm's effects real, human, actionable. |
| | Contrast this with armchair fact-checking, theorizing, posturing. I was offended by how quickly the whole discussion went meta. Bodies yet to be retrieved & buried, folks hanging from their own rafters holding onto life, literally, by their fingertips -- and pundits, bloggers and media types were already well on their way to converting the storm into a object lesson for their own rhetorical strategies. Hijacked our suffering for their own stories. |
| | Get out of my face, says Broussard. He's dealing with life & death and making decisions no one should have to make. The gap between words & things necessarily closes in these instances. Hermeneutics is a luxury. I find those most strident and sure of what actually happened in Louisiana weren't anywhere around when it was all coming down. Weren't delivering ice & medicine and provisions to old ladies. Weren't trying to manage the gas situation to figure out how to get from here to there. Weren't watching their neighbors in line for FEMA supplies and food stamps. Weren't hearing about friends and family losing all they worked a lifetime to acheive. Weren't having their towns and way of life wiped out in a few hours. |
| | Here's a new way to think about blogging and all forms of consumer generated media: forget fact checking [your] ass. That's a parlor game for grad students and professional cynics. Yes, you caught some high-profile folks screwing up. Good on you. We're frying bigger fish now, and you can't play with us if you haven't got the emotional heft. I've seen do-it-yourself media help us reconnect as human beings. Help one another as individuals in need. Answer a calling to the better parts of ourselves. That's where I'm putting my energy. My hope is that whenever someone like Aaron Broussard utters a lamentation that has to be heard, that we'll broadcast it to the four corners and find someone who can help, right away. |
| | Read (and watch) the whole things. |
| | [Later...] When I wrote the above, I hadn't tried to watch the video yet. It doesn't work on any of the browsers I tried on either my Linux or OS X laptops. So I guess it's a Windows-only thing, though it doesn't say that. Grr. |
On the continuing death of Business As Usual
| | Dan Gillmor: I grow more and more discouraged about the future of newspapers. |
| | It's the business. At some point the great spinnig flywheels of Advertising As Usual start flying apart, as pieces seek better spending efficiencies elsewhere. Do the big electronics stores, department stores, sporting goods stores, car dealers and grocery stores really need to spend money for inserts that make the Sunday paper weigh more than a log? Maybe. But don't expect the answer to be Yes forever. |
| | Want to know one reason why Wal-Mart kicked K-Mart's ass? Three words: "Everyday low prices." That simple promise, made by Sam Walton himself and published on every Wal-Mart building, allowed the company to save billions while also keeping their customers safe from the evils of coupon addiction, which nearly bankrupted K-Mart while also narrowing their customer base. |
| | Yes, Wal-Mart has an advertising and promotion budget. But how much gets spent on newspapers? For that matter, how much does Costco waste doing the same thing? Zero, far as I know. And who are the leaders in their categories? |
| | More and more advertisers are going to opt for more direct and efficient contact with customers. That will tend exclude the newspaper business, sad to say. At least the way that business is currently run. |
| | Anyway, I think I can save the papers a lot of money and grief, as they make the transision to the post-print world. I said how here a few days ago; and Jay Rosen repeated it (with italicized emphasis) here. |
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