Read a Book: Tribes

Seth Godin's new book 'Tribes' dips into the whole 'new media' phenom with his take on how a group of devoted followers will coalesce into a powerful force with the adequate mix of leadership and participation. And yes, it is the secret behind the success of blogs, Wikipedia etc. It all sounds pretty obvious, and Godin even gets a little condescending with his motivational 'you can be a leader too' mantra, but he is spot on about the driving force behind most of the successful new media widgets of the 00's.

Google has become an institution; Wikipedia our Bible; Amazon our virtual mall; Facebook the coffee shop; and Craigslist our... everything else. The importance of understanding why and how this shift has taken place is important, but as Godin stresses, new processes will inevitably emerge but the 'tribes' will always exist. Latent groups of treehuggers waiting for their cause, or dormant gourmands eating away in silence. The new communication tools have only enabled specialized groups, which already exist, to form and grow.

Godin's biggest contribution is to boil down these big ideas into bit-size chapters which read like "uh-huh" moments over-and-over. But I'm not sure there is a coherent business model that emerges from his ideas. How will newspapers, for instance, survive when media are specialized for small markets and consumers? Can online advertising sufficiently fund major corporations? I guess will just have to form our 'tribes', wait, and see.

Should The Blog Be Replaced?

Blogs have permeated our lives and have become an unavoidable part of cultural dialogue. But it has become obvious that the medium is flawed. The format does not provide the sufficient platform for its content to thrive on.

Blogs, by definition, publish in reverse-chronological order making them fleeting and temporary. Online content is sometimes referred to as 'ephemera', which is unfortunate. Online publishing should be embraced and strengthened, not cast aside as inconsequential. If this is the future of journalism/communication it needs to be christened with more 'elegant organization'.

I think this process has already begun with sites such as HuffingtonPost. Formerly referred to as a blog the site as embraced a more magazine-y format. Yet some music sites, such as Stereogum, are trapped in the blog format.

I will try to look in more detail at specific sites and blogs, and try to determine whether the online publishing world needs a new format to replace the blog.

Cheney, Again

I woke up today with a mild hangover, not just from all that Schlitz I drank last night but also that nasty taste in my mouth from eight years of the torture, overreaching executive power, and general malfeasance that was the Bush Administration. That's right, Dick Cheney, the guy who kept a low profile as "vice"-president is making the rounds defending his detention policies and urging President Obama to uphold them.

I 'm not sure what this says about the Republican party, wheeling out a former VP to criticize the current commander -- and there's speculation that Dick is positioning himself for a '12 run (not likely). But this was certainly a desperate moment for a former administration which is urgently trying to recast themselves as 'the ones who kept us safe.'

I'm aware that there is a segment of the population who sees torture and detention policies in the Jack Bauer-school of thought. But we had an election, a pretty decisive one. And these former debates on torture policy should be moot, the country is on a new path. Given, President Obama has not fully accounted for all the details, we still don't know what to do with all these suspected terrorists who can't be prosecuted for lack of evidence. But the big picture is clear: torture days are over, international cooperation is here.

Obama greatest strength has been an ability to re-cast the American image after so many mismanaged policies. And he is the President, whether Dick Cheney likes it or not.

Feel Kakutani's Rage

So fabled Times literary critic Michiko Kakutani gave a pretty good tongue lashing to, not one, but two authors in her review piece on Tuesday. It may not have been as entertaining as the showboating Austin Powers piece, but she pretty much laid out both Greg Kot and Mark Helprin for their misguided notions on the role of copyright in the new media environment.

Helprin got the biggest beating, with his staid conservative opinions being drowned out by his utter contempt for basically anyone without his Ivy League pedigree (read: young people, women, Nascar fans.) There are some good arguments to be sure, but Kakutani lays him out to dry. After citing a lengthy quote from his blathering opus, she brands it a "bullying and pigheaded manifesto." Ouch

Kot gets the better end of the bargain by simply being labeled naive: a wild-eyed idealist who sees the future of media in bands like Death Cab for Cutie. Good luck! Kakutani has spoken. I don't think I'll be reading either of these.
(image from Slate.com)

Are the Beastie Boys a 'boy band'?

So I've been slightly obsessed with Vice Magazine's VBS series Soft Focus. The series shows these laid back in-depth interviews with punk luminaries like Mike Watt, Ted Leo, Steve Malkmus -- all the dudes you wanna have a beer with. The interviewer is Ian Svenonius, a former DC punker who plays a sort of faux-Charlie Rose-meets-Lester Bangs character. The interviews can shift from fascinating to slightly awkward, but it seems this is the kind of thing Svenonius is going for.

Anyways, Adam Horovitz was a recent guest and the two discussed topics such as Beastie Boys/Beatles correlation (awkward) and Horovitz discovering LL Cool J (wtf?). But the most penetrating topic for me was the discussion of Bubblegum pop and the supergroup phenomenon. Now I know most hip-hops artists, and musicians in general, tread the line between their on-stage persona and their real life in ways that are most advantageous to them. (Johnny Cash never shot a man in Reno, but the more people bought into it the more popular he became).

The Beastie Boys were different however. As with most hip-hop artists it has been difficult to determine where say, AdRock ends and Adam Horovitz begins. Ok, License to Ill was a definite party album, tongue-in-cheek portrayal of bratty Manhattan teens, but Paul's Boutique was a complete departure, and then there's Check Your Head, with even more profound songs like "Something's Got to Give" showing a more earnest side of the group.

So what are The Beastie Boys, a fictitious group invented by its three members who also portray the three main characters of said group? Or are they some sort of hybrid, a performance art troupe that switches gears whenever it suits them? The latter seems to be the case with most hip-hop acts, although I am sure they wouldn't admit it.

Reader Supported Magazines

So Paste is an independently published music magazine, which does a pretty decent job operating on the pulse of the indie music world. The magazine's feature articles and music reviews are always ripe thought-provoking material. But now Paste is asking readers to donate money to the publication, which is sad not just for Paste but for music journalism in general.

The whole field of music journalism is sort of meandering between the celebrity reporting of Rolling Stone and the hunt-and-peck style of, say, Stereogum. Paste was one of the few pubs which managed to offer both a compelling print version and also an online companion which gave original material of its own.

Will their PBS fund raising stunt spell the end of Paste Magazine. If not, maybe all publications should start asking for user donations and do away with advertising. Sort of like a listener supported radio station. That couldn't possibly work, could it?

What Is Journalism?

So what is this blog? or better yet, what is journalism? I don't know, but to paraphrase Ali G 'I think it has somethin' to do with the gays.' As one of the 18 things for journalism students to do this summer, Hairline Economics is an attempt to explore the questions about where the craft of journalism is going in the internet age.

These questions will be addressed in the new bastardized form of journalism. And, thanks to Jeff Jarvis, will be published in the "half-baked" stage, as to encourage peer involvement.

And just to throw in more references, the blog will exist in the Long Tail market, wallowing in niche categories they appeal to small groups of people.