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ORF ups film funding
Publishing News: Austrian pubcaster settles with local industryites -- Austrian pubcaster ORF has calmed the fears of local filmmakers following months of intense wrangling by agreeing to raise film subsidy contributions by 30%, from E5.9 million ($8.8 million) to $11.9 million a year.

DiBonaventura sets up 'Secret'
Publishing News: Company to produce 'Nicholas Flamel' series -- Di Bonaventura Pictures will produce the fantasy series "The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel."

Littlefield to pen 'Must-See' memoir
Publishing News: Former NBC topper inks deal with Doubleday -- Former NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield has inked a deal with Doubleday.

FCC taps ex-journo Steven Waldman
Publishing News: Beliefnet co-founder to head media initiative -- Steven Waldman, former journo and co-founder of Beliefnet, has been tapped by the FCC to lead an initiative designed to assess "the state of media in these challenging economic times."

TMZ founder to fight sheriff's office
Publishing News: Levin claims phone records were illegally obtained -- The founder of TMZ.com is promising a fight, saying the Los Angeles County sheriff's department illegally obtained his phone records in its investigation into who leaked a report on Mel Gibson's 2006 drunken driving arrest, including details on the actor's anti-Semitic tirade.

Weinstein, Perseus enter joint book venture
Publishing News: Deal includes titles 'All Things at Once,' 'Overnight Socialite' -- The Weinstein Co. has formed a joint publishing venture with Perseus Books Group, two years after founding Weinstein Books.

N.Y. Times cutting news staff
Publishing News: Pub to layoff 8% of news room by year's end -- The New York Times will cut the size of its news staff by 8 percent by the end of the year.

In 'Dreams,' L.A. beat goes on
Publishing News: Journalist's book captures hip scene of '60s, '70s -- If veteran L.A. music journalist Harvey Kubernik was paid by the hour for work on his latest tome, "Canyon of Dreams," he might consider another day job.

Bloomberg acquires BusinessWeek
Publishing News: McGraw-Hill sells biz news magazine to co. -- Bloomberg LP has cut a deal to acquire BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill Co.

Winfrey, Rock find 'Friend'
Publishing News: Lionsgate, Harpo nab rights to GQ article -- Lionsgate has partnered with Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Films to acquire rights to the November 2008 GQ magazine article "Will You Be My Black Friend?"

Doug Watt dies at 95
Publishing News: Longtime drama critic worked for Daily News -- Longtime Daily News drama critic and songwriter Doug Watt died Sept. 29 in Southampton, N.Y. of natural causes. He was 95.

Leonard to be honored with PEN award
Publishing News: Mastras, Black to also get literary kudos -- Author Elmore Leonard will be honored with the PEN USA lifetime achievement award for his long writing career.

Columnist, speechwriter Safire dies
Publishing News: Wrote 'On Language' column for N.Y. Times -- Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist, language expert and former White House speechwriter William Safire has died. He was 79.

Jennifer Rudolph Walsh knows how to book it
Publishing News: WME literary handler has a knack for bestselling talent -- Ask Jennifer Rudolph Walsh how many times her clients' books have been selected to appear on "Oprah," and the co-head of William Morris Endeavor's worldwide literary department can only hazard a vague guess: "A lot. I've been very lucky."

Publishing maven new It girl
Publishing News: Kania taps into the Web-savvy zeitgeist for It Books -- With Carrie Kania at the helm, It Books could be the next big thing in publishing.

Time Inc. editor stays positive in tough times
Publishing News: People, InStyle profitable with Nelson at the helm -- In what has likely been the toughest business climate in the 16 years she's been at Time Inc., Martha Nelson remains steadfastly optimistic about the future of the megabrands she's now charged with overseeing.

One day, one million for 'Lost Symbol'
Publishing News: Dan Brown's 'Da Vinci Code' follow-up selling fast -- Dan Brown does it again, on paper and on the screen.

Musician, poet Jim Carroll dies
Publishing News: Punk rocker wrote 'The Basketball Diaries' -- Jim Carroll, the poet and punk rocker who wrote "The Basketball Diaries," died Friday. He was 60.

Movie theaters cut print show times
Publishing News: Cinemas turn to Web for listings -- Those turning to local newspapers for show times for movies may have to look elsewhere.

CBS, Pepsi test EW video ad
Publishing News: Player will promote fall lineup in print magazine -- CBS and Pepsi are teaming to put a video ad inside issues of Entertainment Weekly magazine.

Variety.com - Publishing News
The premier source of entertainment news. Turn to Variety.com for timely, credible articles, reviews and analysis of film, TV, music, theater, video, gaming and movie and television production -- information vital to your showbiz career.

 

Get A 700+ Credit Score - Sponsored Link
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Ideeli, Barnes and Noble and Clinique are hiring
SmartBrief Nov 20 2009 7:52PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Yahoo! Singapore Nov 20 2009 7:51PM GMT

Harlequin Comics Now Available on Amazon's Kindle
Canadian Business Magazine Nov 20 2009 7:50PM GMT

Tax book published by MIM
Di-ve.com Nov 20 2009 7:48PM GMT

Harlequin Comics Now Available on Amazon's Kindle
Houston Chronicle Nov 20 2009 7:48PM GMT

Harlequin Comics Now Available on Amazon's Kindle
Globe Investor Nov 20 2009 7:47PM GMT

Harlequin Comics Now Available on Amazon's Kindle
Yahoo! Canada Nov 20 2009 7:37PM GMT

Harlequin Comics Now Available on Amazon's Kindle
Street Insider Nov 20 2009 7:37PM GMT

Harlequin Comics Now Available on Amazons Kindle
Street Insider Nov 20 2009 7:37PM GMT

iMinds Expands Global Distribution to Online Retailers and Libraries via OverDrive's Digital Book Distribution Platform
Entrepreneur.com Nov 20 2009 7:36PM GMT

Fusion Marketing Partners Releases B2B Marketing and Sales Book for Unstoppable Results
Entrepreneur.com Nov 20 2009 7:35PM GMT

Harlequin Comics Now Available on Amazon's Kindle
Earthtimes.org Nov 20 2009 7:31PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says first Nook e-readers sold out (Reuters)
West Australian Nov 20 2009 7:29PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says first Nook e-readers sold out (Reuters)
Yahoo! News Australia Nov 20 2009 7:09PM GMT

UPDATE 1-Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
CNBC Nov 20 2009 7:07PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Yahoo! Canada Nov 20 2009 7:04PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
InSing.com Nov 20 2009 7:03PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed (Reuters)
Yahoo! News Australia Nov 20 2009 6:57PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says first Nook e-readers sold out (Reuters)
Yahoo! News Australia Nov 20 2009 6:54PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Media Workstation Nov 20 2009 6:50PM GMT

UPDATE 1-Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Forbes.com Nov 20 2009 6:37PM GMT

UPDATE 1-Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Reuters India Nov 20 2009 6:33PM GMT

UPDATE 1-Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Interactive Investor International Nov 20 2009 6:31PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Reuters India Nov 20 2009 6:27PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Reuters UK Nov 20 2009 6:19PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Reuters Nov 20 2009 6:16PM GMT

UPDATE 1-Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Reuters Nov 20 2009 6:15PM GMT

UPDATE 1-Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
Reuters UK Nov 20 2009 6:13PM GMT

Barnes & Noble says Nook shipments will be delayed
CNBC Nov 20 2009 6:12PM GMT

BRIEF-Barnes & Noble says Nook e-reader shipments delayed-CNBC, citing WSJ
CNBC Nov 20 2009 5:51PM GMT

Moreover Technologies - Book publishing news
Book publishing news - more than 340 categories of real-time RSS news feeds

 

Avoid The Newsstand Bloodbath
Distribution can be as brutal as ad sales. But it doesn't have to be. Here are some thoughts on how to best work with and around the system... first up, the newsstand.

What's on Your Back Cover?
Everyone knows that a book’s back cover needs a bar code along with ISBN and price information, but once those are in place, new publishers often are unsure what to add to the back cover of their books. While there are many different views about what should be on a back cover, I believe the best use is to see the back of your book as a mini sales page, including four elements.

Getting Out There
Michael Brooke's eighth article in his series on independent magazine survival gives advice on getting new subscribers. Is bigger better, or does slow and steady win the race?

The Advantages of Self-Publishing
While there has traditionally been a stigma attached to self-publishing, for some writers the option to self-publish has many advantages.

Interview with Independent magazine publisher Woody from Sneaker Freaker
Started as a way to get free shoes, Sneaker Freaker has become a world-wide pheonomenon with a ton of influence in its niche.

Why Book Publishers Should Be on Twitter
When I speak to publishers about the benefits of Twitter, I get one of two reactions. They either respond enthusiastically, or they declare that Twitter is a complete waste of time.

Who are the needles in the haystack?
Michael Brooke's seventh article in his series on independent magazine survival shows you which readers your magazine should be pursuing.

Are Self-Publishing Companies Cheating by Removing the Hurdles to Get Your Books Published Faster?
Are self-published authors not paying their dues? Are self-publishing services encouraging cheating the system? Brent Sampson thinks not.

A to Z of Self-Publishing
This excerpt from The Economical Guide to Self-Publishing: How to Produce and Market Your Book on a Budget takes you through self-publishing from A to Z

What's Your Magazine's Focus?
A ball bearing publisher is not concerned primarily by size but rather by stature. What does that mean? Find out in the sixth installment of The Ball Bearing and the Beach Ball where Michael Brooke talks about focus.

Interview with Gloria Hildebrant of Escarpment Views Magazine
Gloria Hildebrant, a freelance writer and editor, has contributed to many magazines over her career, but now has a magazine of her own. Along with co-publisher Mike Davis, she has a little over one year of publishing Escarpment Views under her belt. Learn how she's keeping her readers and advertisers happy, even in a tough economic climate.

Learn to Write Like Ben Franklin
Ben Franklin wasn’t born a gifted writer. He had a rigorous and demanding method to improve his writing that you can use too.

Selling Advertising
Michael Brooke's fifth article in his series on independent magazine survival shows how a niche publisher can attact and keep advertisers.

Interview with Suzanne Soto-Davies of Silver and Gold Magazine
While some print magazines are looking at a bleak future, Suzanne Soto-Davis has her sights set high. Her two year-old magazine's 55+ demographic is growing, they're a boon to advertisers, and they are avid magazine readers.

5 Ways Authors Can Find Out Who is Buying Their Books
Authors must find out who their readers are in order to build profitable lasting relationships with them. Identifying readers who buy books from bookstores and independent distributors is usually impossible. The solution? Bonus content online.

Magazine Survival Guide : Advertising and Sales
Michael Brooke's fourth article in his series on independent magazine survival explains how he approaches advertising.

A Strategy For Getting Your Self-Published Book into Bookstores
It's fine to say that you don't need to have your books in brick and mortar bookstores as long as you've got the Internet, but every author and publisher wants that real world presence in their local bookstore, and especially in bookstore chains. Here's a strategy to make that happen.

Interview with Cynthia Moyer of Open Magazine
Cynthia Moyer is a social enterprise publisher of a health and living magazine with one of the most unique twists to magazine publication we've seen. Each issue of Open Magazine is focused around one colour, and all the products, stories and articles are linked to that colour. Find out how colour, a social mission, and a strong desire to serve open minded, intelligent women, are driving explosive growth for one magazine.

Magazine Publishers: Let's Get Small!
Michael Brooke's third article in his series on independent magazine survival advises new publishers to be small. Very small.

A Crash Course in Submitting a Children's Book Manuscript
While the submission process may feel like second nature to experienced writers, it's easy to forget that newcomers aren't aware of the specific procedures. And since everyone can benefit from a refresher course now and then, here's a rundown of the steps.

Why do you want to publish a magazine?
Michael Brooke asks why on earth you're in, or want to enter, this ghastly, cruel marketplace, and has some great advice if you've got the gumption to stick it out.

Booklets, Another Way to Sell Your Books
Why would someone want to turn their book into a booklet? This gives readers a bite-sized palatable introduction to a new topic in their life rather than first delving into a 200-page book as their first experience with new information.

Publishing Books in a Slow Economy
Previous economic downturns have shown that people continue to spend on entertainment. In fact, movie attendance actually spiked during the Great Depression. Some have attributed this to the need to escape bleak reality, and what is better escapism than spending a few hours with a book?

The Ball Bearing and the Beach Ball - Introduction
What does it take to survive, or even thrive, as an independent magazine publisher during these tough financial times? Michael Brooke begins a weekly article series exploring the question.

Consumer Magazines
Consumer magazines generally cater to a non-professional audience whereas trade magazines target a specific profession, trade, or field of science. Some magazines, like computer trade magazines and job listing weeklies, fall into the gray area in between the two categories.

How I Became a Children's Book Author
Multi-genre author Mayra Calvani explains how she went from writing horror fiction to writing books for children, and what she gets out of the experience.

What is a Magazine?
Publishing Central's introduction to magazine publishing begins by trying to narrow down exactly what a magazine is.

Interview with Michael Brooke of Concrete Wave Magazine
Michael Brooke is something of a legend in the skateboarding world. As publisher of Concrete Wave Magazine, he describes himself as a "skater turned publisher," but as our interview reveals, he is as intently passionate about the written word as he is about skateboarding.

Interview with Independent Magazine Publisher Tom Kirkman of Rodmaker Magazine
Ten years ago, Tom Kirkman did what many people would say was nearly impossible. He launched a glossy, color magazine for a small niche market. A decade later, his magazine, Rodmaker Magazine, is still going strong. We interviewed Tom about his successes, difficulties, and lessons learned as a successful independent magazine publisher.

Learn How Kids Can Be Published Authors Too
Kenton Verhoeff is a 12-year old homeschooled boy who has written and published his own book. He offers advice to other young aspiring authors here.

The Rise of Self Publishing
Not long ago, self published books were considered just a few steps above pamphlets run off on a Xerox machine. How did this big change come about?

How To Find A Fashion Magazine Internship
If you are looking to get into fashion magazines as a career, an internship is one of the only ways to break into the business, especially if you want to work for a top level fashion magazine like Allure, Elle or the highly regarded Vogue.

10 Ways to Monetize your Author Blog
If you’re an author who realizes the importance of having a blog to develop a relationship with your existing readers and to find new readers but also needs to write in ways that produce more direct and immediate revenue instead of just tiny blips in the royalty check, then perhaps you need to find a way to make your blog make money for you while it builds your readership.

Publishing Central Updates
Learn about book, magazine and newsletter publishing, plus writing, editing and proofreading tips from Publishing Central.

 

Washington Blade Publisher Shuts Down
FishbowlDC reports that Window Media LLC, the nation's largest gay and lesbian newspaper publisher is closing down. Some of the newspapers they publish ininclude the Washington Blade, South Florida Blade & 411 Magazine, Genre Magazine and Southern Voice.

Politico is also confirming that the LGBT publisher is closing its doors. The closure announcement was also posted on the Washington Blade twitter account. The New York Times has also published a story about the publisher closing its doors.

Posted in ____

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100 Jobs Cut at the Guardian
The Guardian reports that Guardian News and Media (GNM) are cutting 100 jobs at the Guardian. The Guardian's Thursday Technology print section will also be shuttered.

Staff in GNM commercial departments are due to be told about the impact of the latest cost cutting on their jobs by 9 December, while changes at editorial will take longer to complete because cuts are being managed through voluntary redundancies and redeployment. GNM publishes the Guardian, the Observer and the guardian.co.uk website network, which includes MediaGuardian.co.uk, and employs about 1,700 people.

GNM also revealed in the series of staff briefings today that the Guardian's Thursday Technology print section will cease publication at the end of the year.

Layoffs have been widespread and deep throughout the newspaper industry over the past several years. This year has been especially brutal thanks to a combination of internet competition and the recession.

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Hachette Filipacchi Media Closes Metropolitan Home and Pointclickhome.com
Hachette Filipacchi Media is shuttering Metropolitan Home magazine. Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. will focus on its other home decor title, Elle Decor, instead. Hachette Filipacchi Media is even closing its home portal Pointclickhome.com.

The WSJ says data from the Publishers Information Bureau indicates ad pages for Metropolitan Home fell 33% in the first nine months of 2009. The December issue of Metropolitan Home will be its very last.

Other home magazines including Conde Nast's Domino and O at Home have also been closed recently because of diminished advertising revenues in the recession.

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TopTenReviews Acquires Space.com, LiveScience.com and Newsarama.com
TopTenReviews has acquired the Consumer Media Division of Imaginova Inc., a privately held company based in New York City. Included in the acquisition are Space.com, LiveScience.com and Newsarama.com. TopTenReviews has established the TechMediaNetwork to incorporate these properties. Combined, 12.2 million people visit TechMediaNetwork sites each month.

"This acquisition expands TopTenReviews' coverage as a trusted technology adviser and strengthens the company as a source of technology news," said TopTenReviews founder and CEO Jerry Ropelato. "We see strong potential for growth in traffic and revenue as a result of the synergy between the sites."

PaidContent says TopTenReviews raised $6 million in 2008.

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Fortune Reduces Its Publishing Frequency
Fortune magazine is reducing the number of issues it publishes annually from 25 to 18. Reuters reports that the business magazine may also cut staff.

Fortune, like many other U.S. business magazines, has struggled in the advertising downturn.

Fortune will publish two issues some months and just one issue during other months, in the new publishing schedule is part of a remodeling that is expected to result in staff cuts and a sharper focus on the long stories that have been its trademark, the Journal said.

The New York Times reports that the cuts are part of a new round of layoffs from magazine publisher Time Inc.

The changes are part of another round of budget cuts at Time Inc., the nation's largest magazine publisher. Some layoffs were expected by year's end, though the executive said the number had not yet been determined. The news was reported in Friday's Wall Street Journal.

Through September, ad pages across the magazine industry have fallen 27.3 percent this year, but business magazines fared much worse. Fortune, down 34.9 percent, was among the hardest hit, while its closest competitor, Forbes, was down 30.8 percent. Fortune's paid circulation, just over 850,000 in the first half of this year, has changed little in the last decade.

The Wall Street Journal story about the changes at Fortune says big changes are planned for Fortune.com. The WSJ article says the magazine is even considering charging for features like the Fortune 500.

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Newsday Starts Charging $5 Weekly Fee
Newsday has announced that people who are not Optimum Online customers or Newsday customers will have to start paying a $5 weekly fee to access Newsday.com.

Those who are not customers of Optimum Online or the newspaper - both owned by Bethpage-based Cablevision Systems Corp. - will have to pay a $5 weekly fee. However, nonpaying customers will have access to some of newsday.com's information, including the home page, school closings, weather, obituaries, classified and entertainment listings. There also will be some limited access to Newsday stories.

Newsday described the move as one that would create a "pioneering Web model," combining the newspaper's newsgathering services with Cablevision's electronic distribution capabilities. About 75 percent of Long Island households are Newsday home delivery or Cablevision online customers or both, according to Newsday. Optimum Online customers total 2.5 million in the New York area, the paper said.

"We are excited about this model because in addition to a unique ability to immediately reach about 75 percent of Long Island households, we believe the hyper-local approach is right for Long Island," said Debby Krenek, Newsday managing editor and senior vice president/digital.

$5 a week is a lot to charge for online access. Even the Wall Street Journal doesn't charge that much for an annual online subscription. Dvorak says it amounts to $260 a year. Editor & Publisher says Newsday will "listen" to feedback and may tinker with what content is hidden behind the online newspaper's subsscription wall.

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New York Times Cutting 100 Newsroom Jobs
The New York Times Media Decoder blog is reporting that the Times is cutting 100 newsroom jobs, about 8% of the total newsroom jobs. The job cuts will happen by the end of the year, which is not far away.

The program mirrors one carried out in the spring of 2008, when the paper erased 100 positions in its newsroom, though other jobs were created, so the net reduction was smaller. That round of cuts included some layoffs of journalists - about 15 to 20, though The Times would not disclose the actual figure - which was the first time in memory that had happened.

The paper has made much deeper reductions in other, non-newsroom departments, where layoffs have occurred several times. But the advertising drop that has pummeled the industry has forced cuts in the news operation as well. The newsroom already has lowered its budgets for freelancers and trimmed other expenses, and employees took a 5 percent pay cut for most of this year.

Media Decoder says the Times is mailing buyout packages to the entire newsroom staff on Thursday and employees have 45 days to decide whether to apply for it. A lot of newspapers and magazines are struggling right now because of the recession and the switch to from print to online news. It reduced advertising dollars from the recession came at a terrible time for the newspaper industry.

Reuters has published a memo about the job cuts from New York Times Executive Editor Bill Kelle here.

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Get Married Magazine Debuts
Get Married Media has announced the launch of Get Married magazine, a new shopping and trend guide for brides. The wedding magazine includes editorial features on real brides, wedding professionals and experts, as well as an array of inspiring challenges, trend round-ups, product profiles, shopping guides and informative articles.

Get Married is giving the first issue of its magazine for free. Subsequent quarterly issues will be on newsstands beginning January 2010. Annual subscriptions (4 issues) are available at $14.96.

"Get Married magazine is as smart as it is fun, and the response has been tremendously positive from brides, advertisers and wedding professionals. By creating a user-friendly tool that offers choices and guidance on an array of the latest wedding products and trends, we make it easy for brides to simultaneously plan and shop," said Stacie Francombe, founder and president of Get Married Media. "Brides are smart, they are passionate, they like to discover, and they enjoy instant information, and Get Married magazine and getmarried.com afford them the luxury of immediate gratification - it's a girl's dream."

Get Married magazine is closely integrated with the Get Married TV show and GetMarried.com website, which offers brides an interactive experience, including a newly-launched wedding shop that sells products as seen in the magazine, as well as a wedding blog, video segments from the show, articles, image galleries and tools.

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Conde Nast Closes Several Publications
The big news in the magazine industry this week was Conde Nast's decision to shutter several publications. The publications being closed include Gourmet, Cookie, Elegant Bride and Modern Bride. 180 people at Conde Nast will lose jobs as a result of the titles closing.

The L.A. Times describes a sudden switch at glossy magazines form generous expense accounts to cutbacks and firings.

Generous expense accounts were de rigueur at glossy fashion and lifestyle magazines. Some top editors and publishers enjoyed clothing allowances and mortgage assistance. Even lowly assistants flitted about in chauffeur-driven town cars.

But that culture has been turned on its head as the magazine business reels from the battered economy, the drop in advertising revenue and restraints on expenses.

Conde Nast's unexpected closure Monday of venerable Gourmet and three other magazines underscored the swift and brutal fall of what had been one of the city's most elite and free-spending industries.

There have been reports that consulting firm McKinsey & Co. put Conde Nast publications through a brutal review. Even with the cuts and closed publications, Conde Nast may still have job cuts and other cost cutting in its future. Slate compares Conde Nast to General Motors. The Guardian says Conde Nast is slated to lose $1 billion in revenue this year. A publisher can't endure that kind of advertising setback without drastic cuts.

Meanwhile, Conde Nast is launching a dating site targeted at fashionistas. This does not seem like the type of project that will boost the company's revenues by much.

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New Large Format Pet Magazine Deubts
Tame is a new large format, broad-spectrum pet magazine for the Southwest Area. The format of Tame is slightly larger than your standard magazine. Tame is conscious of the ever growing problem of abandoned and abused pets. It's staff is active in raising awareness and support for local animal charities. A portion of ad sales and subscriptions directly benefit animal rescue efforts.

Tame is a free quarterly publication. You can the website here.

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Ebony Magazine May Be Up For Sale
Newsweek has a story that says Johson Publishing may put its flagship publication, Ebony, up for sale.

It's been a year of excruciating decisions for publishing companies-layoffs, pullbacks, closures. Now it appears Johnson Publishing's chairman and CEO, Linda Johnson Rice, has reached what must have been an agonizing decision: Johnson Publishing is seeking a buyer or investor for its flagship publication, Ebony, in an effort aimed at securing the survival of the nation's oldest magazine devoted to African-American life. It's unclear whether the company's other properties, including Jet, would be part of a possible sale.

According to media and investment executives familiar with the developments, Chicago-based Rice, the daughter of Ebony's legendary founder, the late John H. Johnson, has approached, among others, Time Inc., Viacom, and private investors that include buyout firms. Time Inc., the world's largest periodical publisher, already owns Essence, a monthly lifestyle, beauty, and fashion magazine for African-American women. Viacom, meanwhile, owns BET (Black Entertainment Television).

It's not a good environment to find a buyer or investor for a print magazine in this economy and in the the digital age. However, the strongest brands, like Ebony, should do the best. Ebony's website can be found at EbonyJet.com.

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Poll Finds Just 5% of Brits Would Pay For Online News
A recent PCUK/Harris Poll found that just 5% of British news readers would pay for online news. 75% would immediately switch to an alternative free news source.

Someone should send the results to Rupert Murdoch since he really, really wants users to have to pay.

(via 901am)

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MSNBC Acquires EveryBlock
MSNBC.com has acquired a local news service called EveryBlock. The service is billed as a news feed for block. It lets users track nearby crimes, restaurant inspections, news and more by zip code.

"EveryBlock's talented team has a track record of innovation in the industry, and we're excited to add them to the msnbc.com brand family," Tillinghast said. "They've broken new ground with their unique approach to collecting, organizing and presenting news down to the block level. Their impact and importance in the community space is extremely valuable and carries promise for journalism and new business models."

"Joining with msnbc.com gives us the resources to turn EveryBlock from a cool, useful service into something much bigger," said Adrian Holovaty, founder of EveryBlock. Holovaty and the company's staff of five will remain based in Chicago.

EveryBlock's service is offered in about a dozen cities so far. MSNBC also acquired the social news website Newsvine in October 2007.

Permalink | Archives | News Feeds

The Write News
News, features and resources for media and publishing professionals.

 

The Danger of Employing Redskins as Movie Actors
Although it's getting a lot of flak from publishers and authors, Google Books is one of the most amazing contributions to world knowledge launched on the web in years. The ability to search the full text of thousands of books published prior to 1923 -- and hence in the public domain -- is amazing. I've been poking around it for a while, and I found something today while studying how Americans used the term "redskins" before Washington's NFL team chose that repulsive racist mascot in 1933.

In the 1915 book Making the Movies, author Ernest Alfred Dench wrote a section giving advice to filmmakers on hiring Native Americans as actors. Here it is in full:

The Dangers of Employing Redskins as Movie Actors

It is only within the last two or three years that genuine Redskins have been employed in pictures. Before then these parts were taken by white actors made up for the occasion. But this method was not realistic enough to satisfy the progressive spirit of the producer.

The Red Indians who have been fortunate enough to secure permanent engagements with the several Western film companies are paid a salary that keeps them well provided with tobacco and their worshipped "fire water."

It might be thought that this would civilise them completely, but it has had a quite reverse effect, for the work affords them an opportunity to live their savage days over again, and they are not slow to take advantage of it.

They put their heart and soul into the work, especially in battles with the whites, and it is necessary to have armed guards watch over their movements for the least sign of treachery. They naturally object to acting in pictures where they are defeated, and it requires a good deal of coaxing to induce them to take on such objectionable parts.

Once a white player was seriously wounded when the Indians indulged in a bit too much realism with their clubs and tomahawks. After this activity they had their weapons padded to prevent further injurious use of them.

With all the precautions that are taken, the Redskins occasionally manage to smuggle real bullets into action; but happily they have always been detected in the nick of time, though on one occasion some cowboys had a narrow escape during the producing of a Bison film.

Even to-day a few white players specialise in Indian parts. They are pastmasters in such roles, for they have made a complete study of Indian life, and by clever make-up they are hard to tell from real redskins. They take leading parts, for which Indians are seldom adaptable.

To act as an Indian is the easiest thing possible, for the Redskin is practically motionless.

Predicting the Next Hugo Award-Winning Novel

For the last two years I've voted in the Hugo Awards, yearly literary honors for science fiction and fantasy (but mostly science fiction). I skipped the best novel category because I hadn't read most of the works, which is no fun at all since that's the biggest award. So when the 2010 Hugos are decided next spring, I'd like to have completed enough of the nominated novels to make an informed vote.

This won't be easy, since I only read around one book a month. But after digging into the history of the awards, I've found that most best-novel nominated authors have been there before. If you're nominated for one novel, you have a pretty good shot that your next will be nominated as well. During the past decade, 34 out of 50 nominees were retreads. Here are the only first-timers over that period:

• 2000: J.K. Rowling
• 2001: Nalo Hopkinson, Ken McLeod, George R.R. Martin
• 2002: Neil Gaiman, China Mieville
• 2003: None
• 2004: Charles Stross
• 2005: Iain M. Banks, Susanna Clarke, Ian McDonald
• 2006: John Scalzi
• 2007: Michael F. Flynn, Naomi Novik, Peter Watts
• 2008: Michael Chabon
• 2009: Cory Doctorow

There are currently 68 living Hugo-nominated best novel authors, ranging in age from Naomi Novik at 36 to Frederik Pohl, who turns 90 next week on Nov. 26 and recently began his own blog. I put together an Amazon wish list of 22 novels by these authors coming out this year, leaving off some books that have no shot at all, such as book five in a genre series and every co-authored novel except for David Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Escape from Hell, the sequel to their 1976 Hugo-nominated novel Inferno.

I'm guessing that four out of five Hugo nominees and the eventual winner are on this list. I recently finished Transition by Iain M. Banks and began reading This is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams, who was nominated 11 years ago for the novel City on Fire.

If you'd like to vote in the Hugos, all that's required is to become a supporting member of the next WorldCon science fiction convention before voting begins. A supporting membership in AussieCon 4, the 2010 WorldCon in Melbourne, Australia, currently costs $50 and can be upgraded later if you decide to attend. One cool perk of being a Hugo voter is that you're sent ebook copies of most nominated novels and many other nominated works for private review. Unfortunately, by the time they arrive you only have a few weeks in which to read them.

I'll be posting a review of Transition later this week.

Credit: The photo of a 2007 Hugo Award statue was derived from a photo taken by Doctorow available under a Creative Commons license.

They're Gonna Put Me in the Movies

I haven't seen the film Paranormal Activity, but I did fill out a web form requesting that it be shown in my town. That's apparently enough for me to earn a spot in the credits of the film when it comes out on DVD.

I got an email inviting me to add my name to the credits, and if you click the link the invitation will be extended to you as well.

After I filled out the form, I was shown a list of other people who are going to be credited. The list was 3,346 people long when I saw it, and included such film industry luminaries as Jeff "PocketPair77" Sugimura, Nisha Hookerpie, Michael "Shrek" Taylor, Daniel "Better Than Josh Levine" Newman and Jerry S 956 aka IVVI Wargasm. No, I don't know who those people are either.

It's not clear what my credited job is, but if there were any animals or insects involved in the production I could wrangle them.

I'm hoping this credit helps me get into IMDB.

Is Miss Farrell Crazy on Mad Men?

I've become an obsessed viewer of Mad Men this season, catching each episode on its first Sunday night airing and hitting the web afterwards to read reactions. The best place to do this is the blog of New Jersey Star-Ledger television critic Alan Sepinwall, who posts an extremely long critique of each episode that attracts hundreds of interesting comments.

For several weeks, Sepinwall's readers have been increasingly critical of Suzanne Farrell, the outspoken young teacher who is Don Draper's latest hoochie mama. They think she's "cuckoo bananas" and a Fatal Attraction waiting to happen, which I find to be a weird reaction.

I posted a comment along those lines Sunday night, asking this question, "When did an assertive woman who is open and direct about her feelings and clear about her needs equate to crazy? Particularly in the world of Mad Men where the cost of repression is made so abundantly clear."

Sepinwall responded: "I think the drunk-dialing scene in 'The Fog' and the eclipse scene in 'Seven Twenty Three' provided enough in-show evidence for people to at least wonder if something is off about Miss Farrell, if not know for sure that there is."

Though subsequent episodes may prove me wrong, I think Farrell makes viewers tense because she's more self-aware than any of Draper's previous conquests. This trait makes it harder to believe that once they're over, she'll go quietly into that good night.

But it does not make her a bunny boiler. Farrell has never done anything that would call her sanity into question more than, say, masquerading as another man and continuously pursuing empty sexual relationships that could destroy your family.

If you show up next Sunday night on Sepinwall's blog, make note of his rules: Don't post spoilers or talk at all about the preview of the next episode.

Readers Have Never Paid for the News

British commentator Libby Purves has become the latest veteran journalist to declare that Internet freeloaders are ruining the newspaper business and they need to start paying for the media they consume, or else trained professionals like her will take their inverted pyramid and go home. In response to the switch of London's Evening Standard to free circulation, Purves writes:

Call me a reactionary, call me a Murdoch lackey, but the fact is that, after a vague flirtation with the concept that "information wants to be free" and years of internet surfing, I feel a sense of revolt.

It's been fun: like a jammed fruit machine spewing free tokens or a whisky-galore shipwreck. But it's got to stop. Content -- whether music, films, pictures, news or prose -- can't be free and flourish. The music and movie industries are fighting: journalism, after the ego trip of gaining millions of online readers, is following. It has to. There is no alternative.

The labourer is worthy of his hire, time is money, pay peanuts and you get monkeys. Pay nothing and you get dumb (or worse, venal) monkeys. Nothing costs nothing.

Whenever I read an unhappy rant like this from a journalist, it makes me wonder how they could know so little about where their paycheck is coming from. Newspaper readers have never paid for their news, outside of rare exceptions like the Wall Street Journal and trade publications such as Variety. Daily newspapers derive most of their revenue from advertisers. Lauren Rich Fine, a former newspaper industry analyst with Merrill Lynch, estimated that historically, subscriptions generated 20 percent of a newspaper's revenue and the other 80 percent came from classifieds and display advertising.

So back in the glory days of newspapers before the Internet ruined everything, readers were getting their journalism at a steep discount paid for by advertisers. Newspapers were the biggest game in town for local classifieds and department store ads and papers enjoyed extremely fat profit margins because of it. But if there's one thing that a journalist should be in a position to know, it's the fact that times change.

Even today, Internet freeloaders aren't getting their news for free. Nine different ads are running on the page that includes Purves' Times of London column.

The real issue here is that online ads aren't generating the kind of revenue that other ads did for decades, so it's an extremely rough time for the industry. But placing the blame on readers for being cheapskates is extremely misguided. We've always gotten the news at a price much lower than the cost of reporting it.

Credits: The photo of the Evening Standard van by Oxyman is available under a Creative Commons license.

Dear Derek Powazek: SEO is a Legitimate Profession

I'm a huge fan of the web designer and magazine publisher Derek Powazek, but I couldn't disagree more with his rant that calls all search engine optimization (SEO) a con game:

Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned. ...

The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn't work, and it's poisoning the web.

I tried to respond on his blog, but he's closed comments. Saying that good SEO is obvious is like saying that good web design is obvious. Lumping all SEO consultants with scammers and spammers is unfair to thousands of people who do that work honorably.

The kinds of things he's saying about SEO were being said about blogs back when mass-audience tools like Blogger and Movable Type helped popularize the medium. The publishing style of blogs -- short frequent items with category links and heavy link exchange among bloggers -- had a considerable SEO benefit and helped blogs rise to the top of search results, making a lot of static-site publishers angry.

If I'd been able to comment, I would have posed this question to Derek: Have you ever tried to help a small business launch a new site and be discovered by potential customers on search engines? It's a difficult task that's vital to their livelihood. The black-hat junk that he slams makes it even harder for them.

Good SEO is essential to these businesses, which aren't in a position to simply "Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again," since they are not web auteurs with a 14-year track record of launching great sites. Try explaining to a company that provides environmental cleanup services across two states that it doesn't need SEO because it just has to create something cool and tell people. Or a local chiropractor. Companies throw hundreds or even thousands of dollars at yellow-page publishers for a single ad because their need to be found by customers is so strong. A lot of people never look at those tree-killing phonebooks anymore. They use Google.

As obvious as Derek believes SEO to be, he missed one of the most basic techniques by omitting a title in the URL of his blog posts.

I'm not an SEO consultant, but I've learned about the techniques over the years because I run a one-man shop that can't afford advertising. Most SEO techniques are about learning how Google works, not trying to game it inappropriately. The first thing I would hire, if my business could afford it, is an expert in SEO. That talent pays for itself more quickly than any other skill in web publishing.

Photo of Derek Powazek taken by Isriya Paireepairit and redistributed under a Creative Commons license.

Saving Bandwidth on RSS Feed Details

With the current interest in rssCloud and PubSubHubbub (PuSH), I've been thinking about all the bandwidth that's consumed by the RSS elements that describe the feed. When a client requests an RSS feed 10 times in one day, it gets the basic details of the feed over and over again. When clients request the Workbench feed, they get 1,800 characters containing optional RSS elements that I haven't changed in years, except for the PuSH element I added last month. Workbench has 1,900 feed subscribers, so if they average 10 checks a day, they're consuming 32 megabytes every day on information they know already.

James Holderness directed me to RFC3229+feed, a method to request partial RSS feeds that omit elements that a client has already seen. That's useful and has been adopted by some feed publishers and clients, but as far as I can determine, the approach still sends all of the channel elements that describe the feed itself. I wanted to float an idea here to see if it would be useful:

<rssboard:feedDetails>
  http://ekzemplo.com/feedinfo.rss
</rssboard:feedDetails>

This channel-level RSS element identifies a URL that contains the full details about the feed. The details would be expressed as an RSS feed without any item elements.

An optional ttl attribute could contain the number of days the publisher would like clients to cache the information before checking it again:

<rssboard:feedDetails ttl="30">
  http://ekzemplo.com/feedinfo.rss
</rssboard:feedDetails>

A feed publisher who wished to make use of this could move all channel elements except for title, link, description and atom:link to the detail URL. Title, link and description are required in RSS, and atom:link identifies the feed's URL so it can't be moved.

World's Oldest Man: 'Life is Short'

Walter Breuning, the world's oldest man at 113 years, gave a pretty amazing birthday speech Monday at the Montana retirement home where he lives:

Life begins each morning whether we have succeeded or failed or just muddled along. Life is a school to learn, not to unlearn.

Life is the creation by God and if you would know God, be not a solver of riddles. Look about you and you shall see him playing with your children. Look into the air and you shall see him walking in the clouds, out-stretching his arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving his hands in trees.

Life is a great teacher of truth. What is truth to one is not truth to another. What is true in one country may be false in another.

Life is short but the influences of what we do or say is immortal. There needs to be much more of the spirit of fellowship among us and more forgiveness. The power of gentleness is little seen in the world.

Remember that life's length is not measured by its hours and days, but by that which we have done therein. A useless life is short if it lasts a century.

There are greater and better things in us all if we would find them out. There will always be in this world -- wrongs. No wrong is really successful.

The day will come when light and truth and the just and the good shall be victorious and wrong as evil will be no more forever.

Life itself teaches us to best prepare for that future which we hope for and for that journey to that land un-known, not made by hands.

Everything just is beautiful; everything beautiful ought to be just.

The mystery of the world remains unknown. Our maker alone is the key which unlocks all the mysteries of the universe.

The world is neither a prison nor a palace of ease, but rather for instruction and discipline.

This world has been good to all of us.

PubSubHubbub is a Lot Easier Than It Sounds

I've begun digging into PubSubHubbub (PuSH), the real-time RSS update protocol created by Brad Fitzpatrick and Brett Slatkin of Google and Martin Atkins of Six Apart. I was under the impression that it's harder for RSS publishers to use than the RSSCloud Interface, but that isn't the case. The specification is simple and precisely written, adopting conventions like RFC 2119 that make a spec considerably easier to understand, and it communicates using basic HTTP requests.

I wrote the software that runs the Drudge Retort, so I decided to add PuSH support to it this morning to see how it works. PuSH delegates all the work required for update notification to a server called a hub. Google offers a hub at http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/ that's free for use by all feed publishers, so I'm relying on it.

First, I added a link element to the Retort's RSS feed that identifies the feed's update hub:

<atom:link rel="hub" href="http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com" />

Because this element comes from the Atom namespace, I had to make sure it was declared in the feed's top-level RSS element:

<rss version="2.0"
  xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
  xmlns:sitemap="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

The bold portion is the Atom declaration. I already was using an Atom element in the feed, so I didn't need to change this.

When a new story is posted on the Retort, the PuSH hub must be notified that a change has occured. This is handled by sending a ping to the hub with the URL of one or more feeds that have been updated.

I've written an open source Weblog Pinger library in PHP, so I upgraded it to support these pings. A PuSH ping employs HTTP requests (REST) instead of XML-RPC, the protocol used by Weblogs.Com and similar services. I wrote a new function, ping_rest(), that can send a ping to any PuSH server.

By the time I was done, I'd spent an hour on the code and a few hours testing it out. So now when I post a new item on the Retort, Google's PuSH server sends the full text of the item to all readers that support the protocol. This is faster and simpler than RSSCloud, which tells readers to request the feed again.

To give you an idea of how fast PuSH can be, when I posted a new story on the Retort, it showed up 20 seconds later on FeedBurner, one of the first RSS services to support the protocol.

RSSCloud Should Not Be Controlled by One Person

I posted a call for comments last night on RSS-Public, the mailing list of the RSS Advisory Board, asking what people think the board should do in response to the ongoing effort to revise the RSSCloud Interface.

The interface has been a part of the RSS specification since the publication of RSS 0.92 in December 2000. It determines how software can use the cloud element in an RSS feed to connect to a server that offers real-time notifications when the feed has been updated. In a nutshell, here's how it works:

• A user subscribes to an RSS feed that has a cloud element which identifies its cloud server.
• The user's RSS reader contacts the cloud server, asking to be notified when the feed is updated.
• When the feed has been updated, the software publishing the feed sends a ping to the cloud server.
• The cloud server sends a notification to the IP address of all RSS readers that asked for updates.
• The RSS readers immediately request the feed.

Cloud communications can be sent using XML-RPC, SOAP or REST aside from pings, which are sent using XML-RPC.

Dave Winer recently began an effort to revise RSSCloud, persuading WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg to adopt the still-in-progress proposal on all 7.5 million blogs hosted on WordPress.Com. Winer has made three significant changes to the interface.

First, he changed the fifth parameter of a notification request on the REST interface to a series of named url parameters (url1, url2, and so on upwards), each containing the URL of a feed monitored by the cloud.

Next, he added a new ping format to contact cloud servers using REST.

Finally, he has proposed adding a sixth parameter to the notification request, but only for REST requests. The sixth parameter, called domain, identifies a server that will receive notification updates from the cloud server. It's an alternative to using the IP address for notifications.

Winer, the lead author of several versions of the RSS specification and one of the best-known authorities on syndication, is making these changes unilaterally.

Because RSSCloud has been a part of RSS for nine years, I thought it wise for the board to decide what, if anything, it should do regarding this effort. My personal belief is that it's extremely unwise to give a single developer the authority to revise this interface and author its specification.

Ideally, a group should decide what changes should be made to the next version of RSSCloud. This group could be the RSS Advisory Board, which deliberates in public and has 10 members from across the RSS development community, or it could be an ad-hoc group formed strictly to work on the effort.

As a member of the board for five years, I've had a lot of experience dealing with the consequences of a specification process that is closed to public participation and drafted with imprecise language. It leads to situations like the long-running battle over the enclosure element, which carries podcasting files and other multimedia over RSS. As described in the board's RSS Best Practices Profile, the RSS specification doesn't make clear whether an item can contain more than one enclosure. Developers disagree over what the specification means, so interoperability suffers as some allow more than one enclosure and others don't.

I realize that I'm tilting at windmills to suggest that Winer let the RSS Advisory Board get anywhere near the effort. Jon and Kate have a better chance of getting together. But as developers such as Mullenweg implement RSSCloud, they should insist that the revision process take place in public and involve a group of software developers and feed publishers who have the power to approve or reject each change. The group should write the specification together.

Letting Winer make all the decisions by fiat will just buy years of arguments over what his spec means and why no one should ever be allowed to change it.

Related post:

• According to PubSubHubbub developer Brad Fitzpatrick, Winer has said that RssCloud "is frozen and a 'done deal'."

World's Oldest Person Dies, Takes 1894 With Her

Gertude Baines died yesterday at the age of 115 years and 148 days. She was the world's oldest person and the 16th oldest ever, according to a cool table prepared by longevity geeks on Wikipedia. Baines, born April 6, 1894, was the grandchild of slaves who worked as a maid at Ohio State University dorms until her retirement to a Los Angeles nursing home a decade ago. She was a non-drinker and non-smoker who once told a reporter, "I did not have a lot of fun as an adult but I enjoyed going to church every Sunday." She was hoping to live long enough to vote for President Obama again in 2012.

Upon her death, the oldest known person becomes Kama Chinen of Okinawa, Japan, an island that has the highest percentage of centenarians in the world. Sixty-seven of every 100,000 Okinawans is over 100.

The line of oblivion, the starting date for the living history of the world, moves forward 13 months to Chinen's birthday on May 10, 1895.

There's no longer a person around who could have witnessed the revival of the Olympics after 1,500 years (June 23, 1894), crossed the newly opened Tower Bridge in London (June 30, 1894), or lived through the First Sino Japanese War (August 1, 1894 to April 17, 1895). There also are no fans of the soccer team Manchester City FC who can say they've followed the Blues since day one (April 16, 1894).

Baines was the last person who could have hung out with assassinated French President Marie Francois Sadi Carnot (died June 25, 1894), the author Robert Louis Stevenson (Dec. 3, 1894) or Charles Frederick Worth, the British fashion designer who created Haute Couture (March 10, 1895).

Her lifespan reached from the death of abolitionist Frederick Douglass on Feb. 20, 1895, to the inauguration of the first black president on Jan. 20, 2009.

Writing this post gave me a theory about how sports columnist Mark Whicker could have penned that odious Jaycee Dugard column while being blind to its insensitivity. Whicker, a columnist for more than 22 years, writes 200 columns a year. That's an enormous word beast to feed, and you can't fill it up without developing some odd predilections that give you something to write about when the inspiration cupboard is bare. Whicker used the same gimmick in a 1991 column about the release of journalist-turned-hostage Terry Anderson in Lebanon, so he's a guy who obsesses over the sporting events that people miss when they're kidnapped.

As someone who obsesses over the merciless march of time and has filled Workbench with 2,792 posts over almost 10 years, I can to a degree sympathize.

ESPN Spikes Rob Neyer's Post about Mark Whicker

The web site for ESPN spiked a blog post today by acclaimed baseball writer Rob Neyer in which he appeared to call for Orange County Register sports columnist Mark Whicker to be fired for his widely criticized column making light of Jaycee Dugard's 17 years of captivity at the hands of a sexual predator.

The blog post was submitted at 08:57:40 PST and had been deleted from ESPN's web site by the afternoon, but it was cached by several search engines and could be recreated, aside from some text at the end.

Neyer explained the removal in an email Saturday morning. "At ESPN.com, we have a policy prohibiting media criticism, and I ran afoul of that policy, however unintentional," he said. "Thus, an editor pulled the post from the site. Considering our policy, I could hardly complain."

Here's the text of Neyer's spiked post:

You've probably already read or heard something about maybe the worst sports column, ever. If not, Shysterball's take is a good start (among many, many possibilities).

About all this, my friend Keith Scherer writes:

"Rob, You know I work in criminal law. I deal with murder and molestation and all kinds of human depravity every day, so I have a strong stomach. It takes a lot to repulse me at this point, but the lynch mob that went after Mark Whicker this week made me sick. Worst post ever? Really? Can we not communicate without hyperbole anymore?

"The guy misfired. He used a silly hook to bracket a dull article that his editor should have canned. Maybe it was stupid and maybe it was offensive, but the guy didn't mean any harm, and it's disingenuous for his attackers to imply that he's indifferent to child abduction and rape.

"He and his editor deserved a scolding, perhaps, but to go after him they way the mob's doing it – writing letters, trying to get him fired, publicly humiliating him – is loathsome. It's America at our self-aggrandizing, self-righteous, politically correct worst.

"I don't know anything about this guy, but I'll assume -- because this isn't only about Whicker -- he's like most middle-aged white guys. I'll assume he has a family that loves him and can't understand the hatred being directed at him. He's in a dying profession and I'll assume he's very well aware of it, is scared to death he's going to be out of work soon, with no way to pay his mortgage, pay for groceries, or pay for health insurance for his wife and kids. I'll assume he (like many of us) has few, if any, transferable skills, so that every day is a catastrophe just waiting to happen. His life, like many lives, is hard enough already without a posse of strangers trying to kick him to the curb for a lapse of taste.

"Again, this guy didn't mean any harm. He was careless, thoughtless (it's not the first time he has used this kind of hook), and the article really didn't need to be written in the first place, but he's not a moral monster.

"You know me, and you know I spent years putting child sex offenders in jail. I'm not insensitive to the trauma this child and her family went through, and I'd be among the last to trivialize it. But people need to get a grip. What trivializes trauma is when people put on airs and imagine that they themselves are the victims of things that happen to people they never met.

"To call for his head over this -- that's morally wicked. It seems to me, at this point, he's more sinned against than sinning. I hope his family members have forgiveness in their hearts.

"Keith"

I'm not nearly as charitable as Keith (which is just one of my many failings). But while I agree that it's morally wicked to call for Whicker's head because he has failed, morally, what about calling for his head because he's incompetent?

It's especially easy for me, because I'm infatuated with good writing and I abhor bad writing, and columns like Whicker's give my profession a bad name.

We might reasonable assume that it's the worst Whicker can offer ... but are his best efforts better enough, and frequent enough? Again, I don't know. Nor am I going to know. Only his readers can know. And his editors, who should know him better than anyone. Speaking of whom, Keith Olbermann has reserved his enmity for those editors (here's video; relevant clip begins one minute in, if Olbermann's politics ...

Keith Scherer is a criminal trial attorney and baseball writer who contributed to Neyer's book Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Blunders.

After Mark Whicker's column drew furious criticism from hundreds of readers, bloggers and Twitter users around the globe, he publicly apologized and the newspaper's deputy editor for sports, John Fabris, wrote an apology on behalf of the editors who were responsible for its publication.

In a phone interview with Mallary Jean Tenore of the journalism site Poynter Online that followed the publication of his apology, Whicker continued to maintain that he did not make light of Dugard's tragic story.

"I vehemently believe I wasn't insensitive about the fact that she was kidnapped," he told Tenore. "I never made light about the fact that this woman was abducted. I don't think anyone can cite anything in the column that says I did."

On Thursday, former sports journalist Keith Olbermann called out Orange County Register sports editors David Bean, Todd Harmonson and Keith Sharon during the "Worst Person in the World" segment for green-lighting Whicker's column.

Olbermann said, "At least once a career, no matter how good, every columnist, every commentator, will write something so bad, so inappropriate the editors just have to kill it. Mr. Bean, Mr. Harmonson and Mr. Sharon failed to do this. The usually thoughtful Mark Whicker, 22 years at that paper, went tone deaf. ... Mark Whicker will take his lumps for this, deservedly so ... But you're the guys reading this deciding whether or not it gets published, and you say 'great'? You are in over your head, gentlemen."

Update: An earlier version of this story made it appear that Whicker said the "fast-moving, quick-to-judge culture of the web" was to blame for the reaction to his column. Those words were Tenore paraphrasing her interview with Whicker, not a phrase he used. I apologize for the error.

Sportswriter Mark Whicker Makes Light of Dugard Kidnapping

On Tuesday, Orange County Register sportswriter Mark Whicker used Jaycee Dugard's 17 years of captivity at the hands of a sexual predator as a premise for a light-hearted sports column. The result may be the most astonishingly tasteless thing I've ever read in a newspaper. Here's how Whicker starts:

It doesn't sound as if Jaycee Dugard got to see a sports page.

Box scores were not available to her from June 10, 1991 until Aug. 31 of this year.

She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn't high-fived in a while.

She was not allowed to spike a volleyball. Or pitch a softball. Or smack a forehand down the line. Or run in a 5-footer for double bogey.

Now, that's deprivation. ...

The column runs down the sports events, figures and trends that Dugard might have missed while she was being held captive, repeatedly raped as a young child and gave birth to two children by her abuser. Whicker ends with a play on words about her escape:

And ballplayers, who always invent the slang no matter what ESPN would have you believe, came up with an expression for a home run that you might appreciate.

Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard.

In the 48 hours since publication, the column has drawn widespread outrage from bloggers, Twitter users and readers of his newspaper.

"This is quite possibly the worst sports column ever written," Matt Welch declared on Reason.

"I can't decide what's worse about this column, the premise or the kicker at the end. The thing is, Mark Whicker is one of the most underrated columnists in the country. Not sure what he was thinking with this one," Boston Globe sportswriter Chad Finn wrote on Twitter.

Greg Simons, a commenter to the weblog Shysterball, claimed he got a response from Whicker to his email complaint. Simons called the column the "most revolting hook I've ever read" and asked Whicker if his next column would be about 9/11.

According to Simons, Whicker responded, "The revolting thing is that you would equate a column that celebrates the release of Jaycee Dugard, and tries to put the length of her 18-yearkidnapping in a context that everyone can understand, with a terrorist attack that killed 3,000 people. And then you draw a value judgment about me based on such a preposterous parallel."

Whicker, a sportswriter for more than 27 years and a longtime columnist at the Register, describes himself as a "wary refugee in tech-land" on his Twitter account mwhicker, where his updates are protected from view.

Jason Fry, author of the Reinventing the Newsroom blog, says of the column, "Sometimes we all need to be told, 'This isn't running. One day you'll thank me.'"

Update: Whicker has apologized.

There's a Reason RSSCloud Failed to Catch On

WordPress and Dave Winer are working together to bring real-time, Twitter-style updates to RSS feeds using the cloud element and the accompanying RSSCloud Interface. Yesterday, WordPress added RSS cloud support to "all 7.5 million blogs on WordPress.com." Winer's documenting the ongoing work at RSSCloud.org.

Although some tech sites are reporting this as a new initiative, cloud has been around since RSS 0.92 in December 2000. I was getting real-time RSS updates as a Radio UserLand blogger back then, and it was a great feature.

However, there's a reason that UserLand turned off cloud support in its products several years ago and shut down all of its cloud notification servers. The approach has massive scaling and firewall issues.

To explain why, it's worth looking at an example. I publish the Drudge Retort, which has around 16,000 subscribers, including 1,000 who get the feeds using desktop software on their home computers. If I add cloud support and all of my subscribers have cloud-enabled readers, each time I update the Retort, my cloud update server will be sending around 1,050 notifications to computers running RSS readers -- 1,000 to individuals and 50 to web-based readers.

That's just for one update. The Retort updates around 20 times a day, so that requires 21,000 notifications sent using XML-RPC, SOAP or REST.

On Internet servers it's extremely expensive to request data from clients, in terms of CPU time and networking resources. You have to make a connection to the computer, wait for a response and deal with timeouts from servers that are unavailable or blocked by a firewall.

RSSCloud also requires that all desktop software receiving cloud notifications functions as a web server. So if an RSS reader like BottomFeeder or FeedDemon adds cloud support, it must show its users how to turn off firewall ports to accept these incoming requests and possibly turn them off in their router as well. UserLand's attempt to put web servers on user desktops failed because it was too cumbersome to support. Back when I was writing the book Radio UserLand Kick Start and working closely with UserLand developers, their biggest customer service issue was helping users open up their firewalls so that Radio UserLand could act as a web server.

I don't mean to be a dark cloud, because this functionality could be a nice improvement for web-based RSS readers, letting services like Google Reader and Bloglines receive much quicker updates than they get from hourly polling.

But if the effort to make RSS real time extends to desktop software and mobile clients, cloud won't work. I think that RSS update notification would require peer-to-peer technology and something like XMPP, the protocol that powers Jabber instant messaging.

Obama's Speech to Schools No Reason to Freak Out

The lead story in today's St. Augustine Record feeds the hysteria over President Obama's planned speech to the nation's schoolchildren Tuesday. "Parents may pull kids from Obama talk," the headline reads, "Some St. Johns parents fear political message." Instead of covering what Obama's going to say to students, which will be a non-partisan call for kids to study, do homework and help the country by bettering themselves educationally, the Record leads with idiotic spin from Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer, who claims without any evidence that "taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology."

Aside from a comment by the White House press secretary calling it "silly season when the president of the United States can't tell kids in school to study hard and stay in school," reporter Marcia Lane doesn't quote a single person to explain or defend the speech. Instead, she quotes Greer, the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition, a Republican school superintendent in Arizona, unnamed critics and St. Johns County School Superintendent Joe Joyner, who acts as if an attempt was made to sneak this event past him. Neither this story nor others I've read mentions the fact that past presidents also addressed schoolchildren.

I'm a St. Johns parent, and I fear a country that has become so cynical about politics that people don't trust the president to give a speech to schoolkids, simply because they voted for the other party.

I don't know what it is about President Obama that inspires such irrational panic among Republicans. Whether it's the scope of federal intervention in the nation's massive economic crisis, the presence of the first liberal president in the White House in 28 years, the endless stream of opportunistic attacks by the still-formidable right-wing media machine or discomfort over his race and background, Obama faces so much mistrust in everything he does that I fear the country is becoming ungovernable.

On the Drudge Retort, Yav did a good job today of running down all the false, misleading or crazy stuff that's been flung at the president lately:

• Death panels.
• Pull the plug on Grandma.
• Death panels for the disabled.
• Forced euthanasia for our Veterans.
• Breast cancer patients to be killed off.
• Obama's a socialist. No, he's a marxist.
• He's a radical christian. No he's a secret muslim.
• He's actually a Kenyan, not a U.S. Citizen.
• He's an illegal alien.
• He's coming for our guns.
• He's implementing a civil military force.
• He's going to indoctrinate our children.

Every week there's something new that cycles through the Drudge Report, bloggers like Michelle Malkin, radio gasbags like Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, each outlet amplifying the last one until it's another "major controversy" that tells the right wing what they want to hear -- which is that they were right all along about Obama. Work people into a lather, rinse and repeat.

Although I describe myself as a "yellow-dog Democrat," I've always tried to take an open-minded approach to politics and be receptive to other viewpoints. That's one reason the Retort has more conservative and libertarian members than other liberal political sites. But these days, it's hard to take anything coming from Republicans seriously because there's such a flood of bullshit coming from Obama haters.

Political consensus requires an assumption of good faith. The approach many Republicans are taking to Obama's presidency, in which every single thing he does is portrayed in the worst possible light, is extremely destructive to the well-being of this country because it makes consensus impossible. There will be a Republican president in the White House soon enough. The approach being taken today against Obama will be used against his successor. Obama and the Democratic leaders of Congress will stop looking for common ground with people who believe they want to kill grandmothers and the disabled, set up FEMA detention camps and turn the nation into North Cuba. You can't compromise with crazy.

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