Monday, September 30, 2002
Okay, I'll come clean: I need to get my dash use under control. First of all, I'm actually using two hyphens side-by-side with spaces on either side ( -- ) instead of an extended hyphen with no spaces. That comes from using Notepad and a regular ASCII keyboard. Then there's the actual usage. I freely admit to using them in place of parentheses to provide additional information mid-sentence in the form of an aside. According to The Associated Press Guide to News Writing, however, the dash should be used for an "abrupt, dramatic turn," and "therefore, should be used sparingly." If there's "no abrupt break in the thought," says guide author Rene J. Cappon, then "substitute parentheses or commas." Meanwhile, The Canadian Press Stylebook (12th Edition) says to use dashes "to set off mid-sentence lists punctuated by commas", "when commas (generally preferable) would create confusion", "to mark a sharp break in a word or sentence", "to mark off interpolations," and "to introduce a phrase or clause that summarizes, emphasizes or contrasts what has gone before." According to CP, my dash use is at least partially correct. According to AP, I need to clean up my act.
posted by media_dystopia @ 03:30 [ link | top | home ]
Here's a misuse of statistics: "Every five seconds someone is killed by a falling safe." Or whatever else the culprit, usually a public service announcement, is trying to get across. What they really mean to say is that within a certain period of time, a certain event occurs, on average, a certain number of times. They don't actually say "on average" though. I realize they're trying to make a point, but they're doing it as if they have absolute foresight. For all they know, there could be no killings by safes for an hour, followed by a thousand death-by-safe incidents in one second.
posted by media_dystopia @ 00:06 [ link | top | home ]
Saturday, September 28, 2002
The latest Home Hardware commercial features a red-shirted employee raising a wood frame containing a promotional poster. One problem: the text is in English and the store featured in the ad is in Quebec. English-only signs are against the law there. Just one of those little things I notice.
posted by media_dystopia @ 23:31 [ link | top | home ]
Someone over at CNN Headline News has a sense of humor. The static text below the anchor -- not to be confused with the screen crawl on the parent network and similar channels -- has a bolded phrase followed by a succinct sentence. It does a great job of grabbing the reader's attention because you have to read the sentence to figure out the pun in the opening phrase. Sometimes the phrase is so tongue-in-cheek that I picture the writer spiking the editor's coffee with laxative so the send button is left unattended. In a given half-hour newscast, you'll spot a few gems down there. Makes watching the news fun.
posted by media_dystopia @ 21:03 [ link | top | home ]
Apparently I have no appreciation for modern art. During a visit to the National Gallery of Canada I went spastic after seeing some of the multi-million-dollar "art" paid for by the Canadian taxpayer. Rocks arranged in a circle. Blue and red stripes on an extra-large canvas. Large crates along a wall. Concrete room dividers dividing a room (strangely enough). Art with a historical and media context to it, such as Andy Warhol's painted boxes, is something I can understand and even appreciate to some degree. But arranging household objects on the floor and saying it's a metaphor for war, or peace, or war and peace, or whatever else the "artist" conjured up in his drug-addled brain one morning -- that I cannot appreciate, especially when I helped pay for it. Maybe it's just me.
posted by media_dystopia @ 01:19 [ link | top | home ]
Friday, September 27, 2002
What would an IMF-World Bank meeting be without hundreds of anti-globalization protesters making asses of themselves? I'm all in favor of peaceful protests with chants and banners and even the odd clenched fist and middle finger raised in the air. I do, however, have an objection to anarchists showing up with their gas masks and black garb, inciting riots, provoking the police, and destroying public property ("rebeautification" as they call it). People who believe that throwing police barricades through store windows and splashing paint on heritage buildings are legitimate forms of protest. I've always found it ironic that these people claim to defend the "little guy" and yet their protests cause harm to local merchants and taxpayers. It's also ironic that they want to create a media event -- preferably one where news crews only record the police fighting back -- but they wear masks to conceal their identities. I believe there's a word for that: "coward."
posted by media_dystopia @ 20:44 [ link | top | home ]
Here's an ugly trend in the English language: replacing the letter "s" at the end of words, with "z." The underground digirati use it in reference to illegal or copyright-infringed software ("warez"; "gamez"). Illiterate street punks use it to sound hip ("gangstaz"). Does this mean I can create my own words as well?
posted by media_dystopia @ 15:26 [ link | top | home ]
An inspirational travel article on Singapore by William Gibson: "Disneyland with the Death Penalty" (WIRED).
posted by media_dystopia @ 02:48 [ link | top | home ]
Is anyone else forced to listen to Rhona At Night on the radio? I find Rhona to be condescending and insulting. If you listen closely you realize that her show has no substance to it -- just ads and fluff. I say "forced to listen to" because royalty regulations have made it prohibitively expensive for radio stations to stream content, particularly syndicated programming, on the web. Radio aficionados are limited to the programming (and broadcast range) of local stations even though the Internet technology exists to hear content anywhere in the world. If my local radio station decides to fill the 11 pm slot with Rhona instead of, for instance, Loveline -- a show combining wit, intelligence, and professionalism -- then I have no choice but to be subjected to it at some point.
posted by media_dystopia @ 00:53 [ link | top | home ]
Thursday, September 26, 2002
There is a disturbing new trend in television advertising: the dubbed European commercial. Vileda and Veet, to name a few, have ads featuring subtle lip-synching by young, attractive women. What presumably started as a means to save money in the North American ad market has become an insidious fad spreading to American products. A good example is the Head & Shoulders "Do you dare?" commercial.
posted by media_dystopia @ 02:45 [ link | top | home ]
One thing I'm realizing about blogging is that I don't know how much text to link in my posts. Do I link an entire quote or just a single word in a quote? Do I link every instance of a person's, company's, or organization's name? What's an appropriate text-to-link ratio? How much linking is too much? Half of my editing involves figuring out just how much underlining the reader can stomach. Over time I hope to establish a suitable linking style.
posted by media_dystopia @ 02:29 [ link | top | home ]
The new version of Google News launched this week is creating quite a buzz. Steve Outing of Editor & Publisher called it the "best implementation of the global newsstand to date." According to Google, the as-yet beta service "presents information culled from approximately 4,000 news sources worldwide and automatically arranged to present the most relevant news first." Aspiring Web journalists should take note of the word "automatically" -- the news links are generated entirely by computer algorithms, without human editors. Pass the want ads.
posted by media_dystopia @ 01:40 [ link | top | home ]
Congratulations to "Jedi" and "Klingon" for being added to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. The English language will never be the same. Now, if only I can get some more of William Gibson's "nihilistic technofetishist" jargon added.
posted by media_dystopia @ 00:16 [ link | top | home ]
Tuesday, September 24, 2002
Why is Diana Krall stumping for a car company? The ad campaign featuring the sultry jazz singer must be effective because I can't for the life of me remember which car company is being promoted.
posted by media_dystopia @ 23:35 [ link | top | home ]
Monday, September 23, 2002
If you're like me and like finding good American talk radio stations, then be sure to check out 100000 Watts, the US radio and TV directory, and Radio-Locator, the radio station search engine.
posted by media_dystopia @ 00:33 [ link | top | home ]
Oprah Winfrey was awarded the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award tonight at the 54th Annual Emmy Awards. "There really is nothing more important to me than striving to be a good human being," she said during her acceptance speech. While she was speaking, there was a shot of the audience over her left shoulder. You could see actors from NBC's The West Wing. The same people who went on strike for better pay. One of whom is leaving the show because, in his opinion, he's not getting true star pay. Apparently, some human beings need more money than others to be "good."
posted by media_dystopia @ 00:03 [ link | top | home ]
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Long-term exposure to television news has affected my memory. I can remember the names of Israeli presidents, but I can't remember my friends' anecdotes; they usually end up having to repeat them.
posted by media_dystopia @ 02:18 [ link | top | home ]
I am addicted to TLC's A Wedding Story. The women I know don't know what to make of that.
posted by media_dystopia @ 02:14 [ link | top | home ]
Friday, September 20, 2002
It bothers me when people on camera are chewing gum; it looks so unprofessional. I think interview subjects should be told to spit out their gum before the taping begins.
posted by media_dystopia @ 01:48 [ link | top | home ]
Thursday, September 19, 2002
Apple's Switch campaign, featuring anti-PC commercials and Web images with "real" people whose lives are better off with Macs, is getting a tad insulting. I remember seeing the little exploding bomb icon -- Apple's equivalent to the blue screen of death -- quite frequently on my Mac.
posted by media_dystopia @ 20:47 [ link | top | home ]
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Rogers has been pushing its digital cable service and new digital channels through newTVchannels.com, a service of Alliance Atlantis Communications. The ads are inserted into what seems to be the majority of commercial breaks on both the analog and digital services, and most involve some form of guilt trip about missing out on these "great" new channels. After a will-sapping six-month barrage of ads, I finally got a first-hand look at Rogers Digital Cable. I left after it went dead for the third time in two hours, when I was attempting to watch two of my favorite shows. Apparently this is a common problem with the service. I will keep that in mind next time I spend an ever-increasing portion of my television time watching ads for digital cable. I will also bring it up when the next Rogers door-to-door pressure salesperson comes calling.
Follow-up: It only acted up on the first day of service. Luckily, it's been fine since and I haven't heard of anyone else having problems. Please disregard my negative comments about the service itself; the ads are still annoying, though.
posted by media_dystopia @ 22:59 [ link | top | home ]
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Report on Business Television's Web site is called ROBTv.com. Given what's happened in the last year -- thank you Enron and friends -- I'm not sure whether to be amused or appalled by that name.
posted by media_dystopia @ 09:49 [ link | top | home ]
Monday, September 16, 2002
The stuff of nightmares: there's a rumor going around the talk radio circuit that Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien might be a likely successor to Kofi Annan as Secretary-General of the United Nations.
posted by media_dystopia @ 23:07 [ link | top | home ]
Shades of Al Capone's vault tonight on National Geographic Channel's Pyramids Live: Secret Chambers Revealed. It was interesting. It was informative. They had 236 commercial breaks and previews before revealing the "secret chamber" -- I use that description very broadly -- in the final two minutes of the live broadcast. By that point everyone in the living room was going into conniptions.
posted by media_dystopia @ 23:01 [ link | top | home ]
Sunday, September 15, 2002
Friend: "You haven't read The Lord of the Rings?" Me: "I have no appreciation for literature." Much laughter in the room. News junkies are a much-maligned breed.
posted by media_dystopia @ 22:49 [ link | top | home ]
Saturday, September 14, 2002
Bloggers are getting worried about "real" journalists crashing the blog party. These professional writers are -- gasp -- using a medium popularized by amateurs -- which could either thrust it into the mainstream, or ruin it for the veterans. I think people need to keep in mind that the core element of blogging is writing, just as with all forms of journalism. The style of writing may vary as a result of technology and delivery, but it's still writing. Professional journalists wading into the Sea of Blog can only be beneficial to both publishers and readers. Besides, which is better for the medium: the incoherent ramblings of some near-illiterate skate punk who thinks his blog will help him get laid, or an intelligent, articulate, professionally written and researched blog on newsworthy issues?
posted by media_dystopia @ 21:43 [ link | top | home ]
I have to add Anna Bocci, host of TLC's While You Were Out, to the list of woman I'm in love with. That comment is media-related isn't it?
posted by media_dystopia @ 21:22 [ link | top | home ]
Regarding the Florida "terror threat": the three suspects have been released and claim the woman who ratted them out them was flat-out lying. I still think my idle speculation earlier today was accurate -- they played a joke on the woman and now they're upset about being singled out for their heritage. It's interesting how the story developed, from live terror threat to he-said/she-said argument.
posted by media_dystopia @ 00:55 [ link | top | home ]
Friday, September 13, 2002
The live coverage from Florida is interesting as usual. Who was it that said that if journalism is the first draft of history -- to quote Philip Graham, former publisher of The Washington Post -- then live television news must be the first draft of journalism? Someone on CNN I believe. I know that many bloggers like to think of themselves as vanguard of reporting, where "blogging is sometimes the first draft of journalism," as Ed Cone put it. But let's face it, unless your blogging about something you're witnessing first-hand -- "A car just crashed into my living room." Posted by Joe, 1:27 pm. -- instead of writing about what's on a 24-hour news channel, then you aren't the first draft of journalism. In 1996, a Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism student said, "It used to be said that journalism is the first draft of history. Today, CNN is the first draft, newswires are the second draft, newspapers are the revision, and magazines are the synthesis. Cyberpostings are just noise."
posted by media_dystopia @ 11:10 [ link | top | home ]
I've been watching CNN's live coverage of the closure of Florida's "Alligator Alley" due to a possible terror threat. After a few hours I wondered if there would be a lawsuit as a result of this. By that I mean, what if three Arab-looking medical students made a bad joke in a restaurant and were arrested as a result of Orange Threat Level-inspired racial profiling? Just some idle speculation on my part.
posted by media_dystopia @ 10:50 [ link | top | home ]
Thursday, September 12, 2002
Does anyone else have the urge to gag when those Buck A Day ads come on the TV, the ones where "ordinary" people are turned into anti-clone drones? The non-IBM PC is presented as a low-quality, poorly made, might-as-well-be-sold-on-a-street-corner copy of the true original -- the personal computer made by IBM. Just how stupid do these people think computer shoppers are? They're applying brand marketing to an openly generic market. It's the same with AOL and its dial-up ads where "ordinary" people are positively glowing about being able to book trips, get homework help, buy school clothes, and bid on eBay auctions. That's fine in and of itself, but those activities are Internet activities which aren't exclusive to AOL. Anyone with Internet access can do them, and AOL is by no means the only ISP in the world. I realize they're marketing it to inexperienced users, but inexperienced does not mean stupid.
posted by media_dystopia @ 18:58 [ link | top | home ]
A follow-up to my recent hybrid car PSA rant: an article in USA Today says that gasoline engines now in production can be nearly pollution-free and that "Americans can enjoy much cleaner air without the high price of electric cars."
posted by media_dystopia @ 18:47 [ link | top | home ]
Correction: the UN and Iraq are America's favorite bogeymen.
posted by media_dystopia @ 10:52 [ link | top | home ]
President Bush to UNGA: "He has shown his contempt for the United Nations." Who? The average Member of Congress? The President of the United States? Members of the President's cabinet? Oh, Saddam Hussein. Yeah, I guess he doesn't like the UN, either.
posted by media_dystopia @ 10:48 [ link | top | home ]
The UN: America's favorite bogeyman. The US is part of the Security Council -- one of the permanent five with veto power -- General Assembly, and many other committees and bodies. And yet, the US remains one of the biggest debtors to the world body. Constantly in arrears, yet constantly wanting a full say. I wonder how Richard Roth, CNN's reporter at the UN, deals with his editors. They want black unmarked helicopters streaking across the Manhattan skyline; he wants to discuss UNSCOM and Security Council resolutions.
posted by media_dystopia @ 10:37 [ link | top | home ]
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has just finished speaking to the General Assembly. I have always enjoyed his clarity and erudition. President Bush will be delivering his own speech soon. I have always enjoyed his clarity and erud--oh my God what am I saying?
posted by media_dystopia @ 10:24 [ link | top | home ]
The Super Tuesday results were completely lost in the 9-11 coverage. Poynter.org looked at what was leading on local news Web sites across the US. The biggest primary-related story was Janet Reno possibly challenging the Florida vote results. Apparently exposure to salt air impedes one's ability to run an election after over two centuries of experience.
posted by media_dystopia @ 04:10 [ link | top | home ]
posted by media_dystopia @ 03:25 [ link | top | home ]
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
It's nice to see that some people are profiting from 9-11. Like, say, NYPD-cop-turned-maestro Daniel Rodriguez. I just about spat soup across the room when I saw the K-Tel-style ad for his album of jingoistic tunes. Selling that guy's CD today of all days is like having ads for rescue equipment used by the NYFD. I thought it was bad enough sandwiching corporate-sponsored PSAs between segments of live coverage. What's next? "Call in the next ten minutes and we'll super-size your order of authentic Ground Zero™ soil -- all for the low, low price of $19.95! Call now, operators are standing by!"
posted by media_dystopia @ 19:24 [ link | top | home ]
I think CNN's Aaron Brown did a good job with the live coverage, just as he did a year go. Unlike many of his colleagues, he goes out of his way to qualify and preface his analytical commentaries. It's ironic given that his believability ratings ranked just slightly higher than Geraldo Rivera in the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press's News Media's Improved Image Proves Short-Lived survey released August 4.
posted by media_dystopia @ 17:22 [ link | top | home ]
I managed to make it through nine straight hours of live CNN coverage before having to switch it off and go for a walk. I had to subject myself to it, if anything, to see how they handled it. Now I must shut it off for a while before my brain shrinks to the size of a pea. Howard Kurtz's Media Notes column in the Washington Post talked about how there was no place to hide from the coverage and how a backlash is developing as a result. Personally I'm not bothered by the overkill; it's just that there's no "new" in the "news" and I find myself watching just to be a witness to history, not to glean any important information.
posted by media_dystopia @ 16:58 [ link | top | home ]
I'm watching CNN's coverage of the 9-11 anniversary. Very subdued and respectful so far. Meanwhile the Web is observing things in its own way -- Yahoo has gone gray for the day.
posted by media_dystopia @ 07:50 [ link | top | home ]
I want to offer my condolences to my American friends on this day of painful remembrance. I was in Virginia, a few hours away from Arlington and the Pentagon, when it happened. I celebrated a friend's birthday sitting in a uncharacteristically quiet restaurant, staring at monitors above the bar. The subdued din of the lunchtime crowd was interrupted sporadically by F-15s heading to Washington D.C. Suffice it to say, I got a first-hand look at how Americans felt that day.
posted by media_dystopia @ 07:26 [ link | top | home ]
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Today's Homeland Security Nationwide Threat Level is Orange (High).
posted by media_dystopia @ 20:07 [ link | top | home ]
It's Super Tuesday. It will be interesting to see the outcomes of today's primaries. Opensecrets.org has details about the money raised for these and other congressional races.
posted by media_dystopia @ 20:01 [ link | top | home ]
Monday, September 09, 2002
The previous post notwithstanding, I do miss watching Fox News' Geraldo Rivera, the man who put the "e" in "egomaniac." The man who, as Lewis Black put it in his year-end commentary on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in January, 2002, keeps irony alive by being called a "war correspondent." I caught Rivera's reports just for the entertainment value, not for any news they may or may not have contained. That and to remind myself that my ethical and moral compasses were pointing the right direction. Say, when a journalist carries a firearm in a war zone, does that make him an unlawful combatant or a moron? Just wondering.
posted by media_dystopia @ 02:31 [ link | top | home ]
The September 11 anniversary is in a few days and I'm having mixed feelings about re-living the attacks through the news media. Like so many others I watched it live within a few minutes of the first plane hitting. I was stunned. I was shocked. I was saddened. But I was also enthralled. My journalistic passions were aroused. I got a hard-on -- for lack of a better description -- when I saw the words "live" and "breaking news" on the screen at the same time. I learned the delicate art of tracking screen crawl, consuming frenetic imagery, and absorbing commentary at the same time, like a heroin addict balancing needle, spoon, and flame. I was high on the journalistic adrenaline rush. The coverage became my opiate. But sometime in the past year I burned out on my new drug. Now I find myself reaching for the remote control when 9-11 is re-lived. I'm still going to watch the live coverage of the anniversary, but it will be harder to digest than last year.
posted by media_dystopia @ 01:59 [ link | top | home ]
Here's something I read in the September 7 Ottawa Citizen regarding new exercise and diet recommendations: "...the chances of Canadians meeting the new hour-long target are about as good as a fat kid passing up a Twinkie." Note to writer Susan Burgess: it's the kind of cute lead they teach in a j-school feature-writing class, but I don't think it has any place in a serious front-page news piece about the health and well-being of Canadians. I just about spat out my own Twinkie when I read that.
posted by media_dystopia @ 01:23 [ link | top | home ]
I'm getting tired of listening to Moby's veganspeak.
posted by media_dystopia @ 01:15 [ link | top | home ]
Sunday, September 08, 2002
Here are some of my favorite media and information links:
Refdesk - "The single best source for facts on the Net."
Newsday.com - AP News - "News. Minute by minute."
Merriam-Webster OnLine - "The language center."
Project for Excellence in Journalism - "An initiative by journalists concerned about the standards of the news media." (includes the Daily Briefing)
Poynter Online - "Everything you need to be a better journalist." (includes Romenesko)
MediaChannel.org - "...a nonprofit, public interest Web site dedicated to global media issues." (includes the Media Ownership Chart)
Media Research Center - "The leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias."
I Want Media - "Media news and resources."
Blogdex - "...a system built to harness the power of personal news, amalgamating and organizing personal news content into one navigable source, moving democratic media to the masses."
GlobalSecurity.org - "...focused on innovative approaches to the emerging security challenges of the new millennium."
DefenseLINK - "Official Web Site of the U.S. Department of Defense." (includes the DoD Almanac)
Follow-up: See sidebars.
posted by media_dystopia @ 08:56 [ link | top | home ]
Would it be possible to have a tennis tournament which doesn't feature the Williams sisters duking it out for the title?
posted by media_dystopia @ 08:37 [ link | top | home ]
Saturday, September 07, 2002
A great quote from George Orwell's 1946 essay Politics and the English Language: "If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy." (Found this essay and many others at Political Writings of George Orwell.) Ironic considering stories like PBS Online NewsHour's report on The Vanishing Verb, detailing "the truncated, telegraphic delivery" of today's television news. I wonder if Orwell would be impressed. Probably not.
posted by media_dystopia @ 07:03 [ link | top | home ]
For those interested in conflict-related journalism, here's a great little piece by Mediachannel.org's Danny Schechter called Covering Violence: How Should Media Handle Conflict? talking about some of the media's shortcomings in that area.
posted by media_dystopia @ 06:38 [ link | top | home ]
Friday, September 06, 2002
It bothers me when TV ads featuring "real people" feature the same "real people." For instance, the guy in the AOL commercial who wonders "who that guy is" also gets out of debt with Ameridebt's help. That's not the sort of peek behind the advertising curtain I need. I was perfectly content to live in blissful ignorance and believe that those were indeed everyday folks like me. Instead, one of them gets himself a good agent and is freed from the oppressive weight of debt, and two perfectly innocuous ads are messed up for me. Now I can't see or hear either commercial without having this whole discussion in my head.
posted by media_dystopia @ 10:32 [ link | top | home ]
Is anyone else disgusted with the hybrid car PSAs from Act Green featuring Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz? I'm not sure what bothers me the most about it. The campiness for sure. They must have dropped a few IQ points to pull off that ditsy performance. (Notice that the Academy Award-winning actress is reading from cue cards. Irony at its finest.) Beyond the silliness is the message: that people -- you, me, everyone -- are responsible for global warming and dependence on foreign oil because we haven't gone out and bought a US$20,000+ vehicle yet. Doesn't the Environmental Media Association (EMA), the makers of the PSA, realize that most middle class families, including many two-income ones, cannot put that much money into a car? And certainly no one with less than a middle class income. I think it's particularly insulting that the message is coming from two affluent actresses. Perhaps I wouldn't be so offended if the PSA featured people who had to make a difficult financial decision in the name of environmental activism.
posted by media_dystopia @ 09:17 [ link | top | home ]
I am in love with the woman in the Home Depot tiling commercial. I'm pretty sure she was also in an antiperspirant commercial. I'm thinking about calling Home Depot to enquire about her, but I don't think they will appreciate my interest. "No I am not a stalker! Hello? Hello?"
Follow-up: Looking back at my inaugural post a year and a half later, it seems appropriate that I christened my blog with a declaration of love for the enigmatic Home Depot tiling woman.
posted by media_dystopia @ 08:42 [ link | top | home ]