Blog full o' bitter!
Man, what’s the world coming to?
A federal appeals court has rejected a law requiring airlines to provide food, water, clean toilets and fresh air to passengers trapped in a plane delayed on the ground. (Link)
Seems only the federal government can pass such a law.
EIGHT MILLION BUCKS FOR A HOUSE I can understand, but $1 Million for a car? If you can’t be happy in a $185,000 car you have your priorities all wrong.
Newsflash for Michael Scherer: The shift occurred many years ago.
Here is a basic shift that has occurred in the news business: Because of the Internet, you, the reader, no longer have buy information in pre-fabricated packages like “newspapers.” You can just go online and individually select the articles you want to read. And there are lots of websites and blogs to help you out. Every day, Matt Drudge, the Huffington Post, Yahoo, Google, Swampland, or a hundred other different bloggers, will pre-select articles for you and provide links. You choose your own adventure.
And though he thinks he has had an epiphany, he still don’t quite get it.
This means that the competition on the level of the individual story is more intense than ever before, and there is enormous pressure to distinguish yourself from the pack. Assume, for instance, that 12 news organizations do the same story on the same day about how Hillary Clinton has a tough road ahead of her to get the nomination. Which story is going to get the most links and therefore the most readers?
Jeez. Twelve different versions of the same “news”. There is something wrong with that picture. It really doesn’t matter who gets the most hits unless you are trying to sell some kind of “package”. Quit trying to “package” the news and you wouldn’t be thinking this way. Stick to actual news reporting instead of “actual news-making” and maybe a real light would go off as to how things are really changing in the media business.
Is it the one that cautiously weighs the pros and cons, and presents a nuanced view of her chances? Or is it the one that says she is toast, and anyone who thinks different is living on another planet?
What difference does it make when the consumer can have both? The best writer that people like to read the most will get the hits. Given adequate exposure, such as from Google PageRank, or a link from Drudge or InstaPundit, the market will make sure that the best product is consumed. If you are not in the clique and don’t get links from the A-listers, well, you can always buy a banner ad on the A-listers site. (That’s what this guy did. Too bad he spent all that money for a Drudge banner and then didn’t have anything interesting to say. All he did was give Sarah Marshall a lot of free publicity, which was probably the intent the more you think about it.)
The most dramatic aspect of the re-polarization is not simply that there is this new crew of reporters getting large chunks of the readership based on merit instead of as a result of working for some bloated rag (though that is a welcome change,) it’s that the little guy, people like me, can consistently have a thousand people a week hearing what I have to say. (If you are just some work-a-day Joe I challenge you to go out and rent a hall and try to get even a hundred people to come hear what you have to say every day for a week, much less hundreds and sometimes thousands of people a day for years and years running.)
People who don’t have to work and raise kids who can spend more than an hour or two a day on their blogs can easily increase their readership numbers by an order of magnitude, attaining a circulation comparable to a small daily. And there is no limit to the synergies created by a few talented people working together.
The biggest change brought to the media’s business model by the Internet is in the long tail. Here is a snippet from a rambling analysis I did on the topic several years ago:
As a result of this continual empowerment of the common folk, the established media will once again be forced to recruit talent instead of ideology in order to compete in the hit count seduction of advertisers. The alternative is to whither away and die. Either way they play it, America is better off.
Trying to figure out how to get the most hits for a news article is a waste of time. What a publisher should be concerned with is getting the most aggregate hits on a topic. Instead of assigning a story to one person, assign it to twenty.
Here are some other articles I’ve written on the subject:
Like having access to all human knowledge is an addiction.
Not much I can add to this:
[Sydney Blumenthal,] A senior adviser to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has agreed to plead guilty to drunken driving after the arresting officer was ordered to Iraq making a trial on a more serious charge impossible, police said Monday.
That’s funny. I thought Hillary wanted to bring the troops home. But until then, one more wont matter I guess. I don’t know about any of you all, but I would have chipped in to have the cop flown flown back to the states for the trial. Round trip first class.
I would like a hearing into how the officer came to be “ordered” to Iraq.
More proof that the school systems across the country are run by a bunch of socialists:
With candy sales banned on school campuses, sugar pushers are the latest trend at local schools. Backpacks are filled with Snickers and Twinkees for all sweet tooths willing to pay the price.
“It’s created a little underground economy, with businessmen selling everything from a pack of skittles to an energy drink,” said Jim Nason, principal at Hook Junior High School in Victorville.
This has become a lucrative business, Nason said, and those kids are walking around campus with upwards of $40 in their pockets and disrupting class to make a sale.
Where the hell you been, Mr Nason? Candy sales have been a lucrative business for quite some time. Should be a big spike in sales (and confiscations) this week, eh, Mr Nason? I guess all your special candy agents are in place for maximum enforcement of the candy laws.
Any capitalist knows (even aspiring young junior high capitalists it would seem) that it is not possible to ban a product that is in high demand without creating an intractable enforcement regime. This pattern can be seen occurring over and over again. There is simply no good way to ban things that people want.
But reality doesn’t matter to socialists, especially once a good idea is put into place. No amount of failure can make them stop. What, you think a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats with a cause are going to repeal the failed candy and soft drink prohibition act just because some unruly kids have plugged a market void, do you? Mark my words, a costly enforcement policy will be established including surveillance and severe consequences including suspension for bringing candy to school. Otherwise they can’t tell if their brilliant program is working.
The schools mandate is to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic and not worrying about whether a kid eats too much candy. Here’s an idea, how about teaching the kids that too much sweets are not good for them?
This whole situation is a result of Schwarzenegger’s do-gooder school nutrition BS out in California. Maria Shriver probably told him to do it.
