Newspapers vs. Journalism

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

— Clay Shirky


Redefining WMD

MSNBC ran the startling headline this morning: Man arrested near Capitol faces WMD charge. How intriguing! Was a criminal mastermind skulking through the streets of DC with a nuclear bomb in his trunk?

<the suspect> tried to manufacture a “weapon of mass destruction, that is, an explosive device capable of causing multiple deaths or serious bodily injuries to multiple persons, or massive destruction of property,”

At the height of the Cold War, “weapons of mass destruction” meant nuclear warheads that were capable of eliminating broad swaths of humanity with a single explosion. With the onset of the “war on terror” we expanded WMD to include bio-weapons that could infect the water supply for an entire city or chemicals that could poison the air of a local community.

Now it seems that our redefinition of the phrase has gone too far. From the article:

The device was made of a can of gunpowder taped to a box of shotgun shells and a bottle with buckshot or BB pellets, according to court documents.

Excuse me? Our BB Bomber constructed a make-shift bomb from a coffee can and some shotgun shells and he is being charged with trying to manufacture a WMD? What can the phrase mean if a quick trip to Wal-Mart and some duct tape yields a weapon of mass destruction? I fear that our language is deteriorating faster than our laws.

What’s wrong with online advertising

When the news broke today that a crane had fallen in New York City I immediately went to the web in search of video footage. CNN was my first stop. As expected, they had a video clip at the top of the page.

The next two minutes were a stunning realization of all that is wrong with the current attempts to monetize online video. The clip was 75 seconds long. In order to watch the clip I had to endure a 30 second pre-roll advertisement . . . for VIAGRA!

I am a woman in my late 40′s who has no need or interest in Viagra. The length of the ad was nearly 1/2 as long as the length of the news clip and I had absolutely no interest in the product. What a waste of my time.

I used to pay CNN an annual subscription to access their online content without advertising. What a pity that they discontinued this service. I would rather pay a few dollars a year for their service then waste precious time and have my brain cluttered with useless advertisements.