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What did they say or how did they say it? Best quote of the night from a pundit: Historian Michael Beschloss on PBS: “At times, I thought I was watching a debate between Adlai Stevenson and John Wayne.”
Personally, I have decided that the best way to watch a presidential debate is to open an IM conversation with someone who is against the candidate you support. You realize that debates are merely a rorschach inkblot test. Over the past 90 minutes, I’ve discovered in the real-time, stream-of-consciousness flow of IMing comments how our preconceptions totally dictate how one reacts to the “performance” of each candidate. Now as I watch the pundits, it’s so obvious that they have no idea how this debate is playing on the other end of the camera.
As I expressed to my IMing partner tonight, this debate was unique among those I’ve viewed in my life. The two candidates have opposite points of view on the BIG ISSUE. They actually clearly (ok, maybe not so clearly, but emphatically) communicated their disagreement. Most of the time, by this time in the campaign, the race for the “un-decideds” means the candidates both sound similarly mushy on their aims but wonkishly different on how to get there. Tonight, the candidates did a good job of giving voters a choice between two clearly (or unclearly) stated positions.
I know who I thought did a better job. I know my IM friend totally disaagrees. And now I know we’re just viewing an inkblot.
rexblog bumper music:
Two Different Worlds (Ricky Skaggs)
iRoad-trip: I’ll be in the car the next few hours so I’ve been to the podcasting filling station and will attach the iTrip to the iPod and iListen.
 Search for the rest of us clowns: Clusty, which has nothing to do with a character on the Simpsons, is a new consumer search offering from Vivismo, the NYT’s John Markoff reports:
The new Clusty service for consumers, which will be free and supported by advertising revenue, uses a similar organizational structure. But it also presents a series of tabs enabling the user to see results from sources besides the general Web, including shopping information, yellow pages, news, blogs, and images.
If the service is supported by advertising revenue, I wonder what Media Hack will suggest about their dilemma?
Side note: I give those Vivismo folks some credit for being bold enough to name their product something that, if not perfect, will be dubbed “clutsy.” I also give them credit for having the foresight to grab the clutsy.com URL in case that happens (or for clutzy typists).
Update: Tara (researchbuzz.org) Calishain, who wrote the book on this topic, wants to type “Crusty” instead of “Clusty.” But unlike me, she has a helpful, insightful review of it:
“I find Clusty pretty good. A little slow, but pretty good. I don’t like the ‘blog search aspect. For me, most of the usefulness of ‘blog search or RSS feed search is that you can get the results in order of publication. You’re not getting that that I can see in a Clusty search, which makes it less than useful. I’d also like to see more unusual sources ala Vivisimo, like the ClusterMed offering.”
News you can lose: From yesterday’s NY Daily news comes this news about not one, but two, vaporzines. And, thank goodness, they’re “shopping magazines” so they’re something new that no one has every thought of before:
Star Magazine and Vibe both announced plans yesterday to enter the booming shopping category next year with spinoffs. Star Shop will debut in March because, chief editorial director Bonnie Fuller said, “It’s natural for Star to give birth … Our readers love to come to Star for the latest celebrity trends in what to wear and where to buy it.” …Star Shop will focus on trends in beauty and fashion and include what Fuller called “celebrity love affairs with entertaining and travel.” If Star Shop sells well, it’ll become a quarterly. Urban music mag Vibe will debut Vibe Vixen in February, aiming the twice-yearly spinoff at young women with an eye for fashion and beauty products.
(via iwantmedia.com)
Bush vs. Kerry (the RSS debate): Despite this confusing article on Wired.com making it sound like only the Bush campaign will be pushing out spin during the debate tonight, one can follow the “rapid response” of both campaigns. Here’s how:
Kerry campaign “rapid response” syndication feeds: RSS 1.0 and xml RSS 2.0
Bush campaign “debate fact” feeds
The unique feature of the Bush feed is that several days ago, the campaign e-mailed the feed code to Bush bloggers suggesting they add it to the their blogs and websites. I’m sure that within the next five minutes, someone will have a similar code available to make the Kerry syndication feeds displayable in the same way.
Debate reviews already in: Jeff Jarvis can’t watch the debates live tonight but the buzzmachiniacs have already given him a post-debate wrap-up:
The Dems think Kerry won.
The Repubs think Bush won.
Old media agrees with the Dems.
Talk-radio agrees with the Repubs.
The pajama-wearing ankle-biters are divided over who won, but really defend their positions well.
Michael Moore is a jackass.
I agree with Jeff: That pretty much covers it.
Jack & less water, please: One of this weblog’s seven readers has already e-mailed me asking if I’ll be covering the magazine-related Tennessee controversy reported in Nashville’s morning paper today. The answer is no.
Quote:
On Tuesday morning, CNN’s Jack Cafferty brought the world’s attention to a small publication with a pretty big mouth. Modern Drunkard Magazine’s editor Frank Rich published a scathing editorial after it was brought to his attention that between 20 months and a year ago the Jack Daniel Distillery had quietly dropped the strength of its signature black label Tennessee whiskey from 86 to 80 proof.
Side note: I must have missed the news about Frank Rich starting a magazine on the side. This may explain why his NYT columns make so little sense to me.
Update: The drunkard Mr. Rich, who obviously has never read this weblog before, was kind enough to clear up my confusion. He explains (in the comments) that he wasn’t the former theatre critic, NYT columnist Frank Rich. Thanks.
rexblog bumper music: Mountain Dew (Willie Nelson)
 Google News business model: It’s being discussed all over the place, so I feel somewhat after-the-fact making an observation on the Wired.com Media Hack column about the “problem” Google has if it ever tries to monetize its 3-years-old, but still in beta, Google News.
Quote:
As it turns out, however, Google has a problem that is nearly as complex as its algorithms. It can’t make money from Google News. So while other online publishers like Yahoo News and MSNBC earn tens of millions of dollars in revenue each year and continue to grow, Google News remains in beta mode — three years after it launched — long after most of the bugs have been excised. The reason: The minute Google News runs paid advertising of any sort it could face a torrent of cease-and-desist letters from the legal departments of newspapers, which would argue that “fair use” doesn’t cover lifting headlines and lead paragraphs verbatim from their articles. Other publishers might simply block users originating from Google News, effectively snuffing it out.
While I’ve blogged on the topic of how publishers view Google as a threat, the “Google can’t make money from Google News” argument is lost on me. It makes about as much sense as an argument for why Google can’t make money from its front page because there are no ads there also.
The logic that concludes that ads on Google News will lead publishers to sue Google may be legally valid, but I’d bet Google News delivers a significant percentage of the eyeballs those publishers are monetizing (finally) in other ways, or directly from Google’s AdSense program, causing them to be hard-pressed to bite that hand.
Furthermore, every time I use Google (which is often), that brand is jammed into my face which is saving Google untold tens of millions of what I believe are called “equivalency advertising dollars.”
Those six million unique users a day fondling that Google brand and using Google as the doorway-of-choice into all that news “content” seems like a business model to me. Especially when it helps lock down a billion dollars of advertising being purchased on Google from a gazillion small business owners who don’t read Wired.com.
Suggested next assignment for Media Hack: Why the cable industry can’t make money from C-Span and what they should do about it.
rexblog bumper music: Ain’t That Good News (The Persuasions)
 How much is that magazine in the window? New York Dog magazine goes on sale Friday.
Quote from the new magazines’s website:
“Combining biting humor, some of the city’s best writers, great photography and a lavish look most women’s glossies would die for. The New York Dog Magazine is an upscale magazine with attitude - catering to one of the fastest growing markets in the country.”
Okay. I confess. Those who know the lofty position maintained by the canine member of my family could make a convincing argument that I am a part of that fast growing market.
Free Martha update: AP reports that Martha Stewart will be spending her prison time in a federal prison in Alderson, West Virginia, not those facilities speculated earlier that are in Connecticut or Florida. A reminder, before you start thinking West Virginia-hillbillies, remember it’s the home of the Greenbrier. Here’s what AP says about the prison:
The West Virginia prison, nicknamed Camp Cupcake, opened in 1927 as the first federal prison for women. It was the vision of Eleanor Roosevelt and Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the first woman appointed to run federal prisons. The facility is set on a hill in a rural area. There are no metal fences surrounding the camp. Inmates have fixed schedules and must work, but free time can be spent playing volleyball, softball or tennis, or doing aerobics. Billie Holiday, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a member of the Manson family who tried to shoot President Ford, and Sara Jane Moore, who also tried to kill Ford, are among the facility’s alumnae.
Limited collector’s edition post: Sony Online Entertainment is working with the publishers of PC Gamer magazine to create Sony Online Entertainment Worlds, a “limited collector’s edition magazine.” Which means I now have a new ambiguous term, “limited collector’s edition magazine,” to use for a custom magazine that apparently (the release appears to “write around” the magazine’s planned frequency) only comes out once (or, as we custom publishing insiders call it, a “one-off”) but has “regular” columns and features.
(Thanks Eddie Rider)
Custom publishing update: Short story (second one) in the NYT about Bergdorf’s “magalog” (which is an old term but seems to be morphing into a catch-phrase that means customer magazine. However, I would argue the newsstand magazines Lucky, Cargo, et al, are more “magalogs” than the Bergdorf magazine, but I digress). For the record, the article makes it sound like the Bergdorf magazine is new, but it’s been around a while.
Birth of a notion: Doc Searls (a noted radio-lover) overviews the concept of podcasts or podcasting. And just in case the concept gets too attached to one specific digital listening device, he’s coined an acronym Personal Option Digital casting. The concept is this: The podcaster (anyone) creates and posts to the web an audio file on whatever topic or interest he or she wants. Listeners then download the file to enjoy on their computer or iPod (or other such device) whenever they want. With Adam Curry’s iPodder, someone can do that automatically.
Some examples are Adam’s Daily Source Code (which I haven’t heard) or Dave Winer’s Morning Coffee Notes (which I have listened to but warn it requires an ‘acquired taste’).
Doc explains:
The key virtue of this new breed of radio is that it’s Net-native. That is, it’s archived in a way that can be listened to at the convenience of the listener, and (this is key) that it can be linked to by others, and enclosed in an RSS feed. It’s because of that last feature that Adam could create iPodder, which automatically routes a podcast to an iPod (it’s what Adam calls “an iPod filling station”).
I can see magazines, associations, churches schools and companies utilizing podcasting to distribute regular audio content to their audiences. Lots of companies have dial-in conference call presentations that could be easily made asynchronous via podcasting. And how hard would it be to post a church worship service each week? Or a wrap-up of a Friday night high school football game? Heck, I might start doing my Titans game-day review via a podcast.
And, as I’ve been designated by some as a “CEO blogger” poster child, I can see a much quicker adoption timeline for CEO podcasting than CEO blogging. Stick a microphone in front of a CEO and say, “What would you like to tell your employees today?” and you’ll get a much quicker buy-in than sitting a keyboard in front of them and saying, “blog a message for the world to read.” A word of warning to corporate communicator-types: Don’t script it for the CEO…with “podcasting” voice is not a metaphor for writing in a conversational, believable fashion. Voice is actually voice. (Will this be something like when talkie movies started and some silent stars couldn’t make the transition? Will the way some bloggers sound not synch with how we’ve come to perceive their voices?
Interesting development to watch, or should I say, listen for.
Oh, and Doc warns that if we call this Radio or “broadcasting” the folks at NAB will start lobbying against it.
rexblog bumper music: Radio Fodder (Cloud Cult)
One angry rich dude: Today, George Soros sent out a press release, held a press conference, started a national speaking tour, announced an ad campaign that begins with a two-page spread in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, announced that he’ll be mailing copies of his speech to 2 million people, released a new book and, oh yeah, launched a blog in which “he” (it’s his blog) describes himself as “the billionaire investor and philanthropist.” According to Bloomberg, Soros has already bankrolled such organizations as Moveon.org & America Coming Together with an $18.5 million contribution. In his press conference today, he said he’ll be spending up to $3 million on the personal campaign he is undertaking.
I’ve read the press release and his speech very carefully trying to understand what exactly it is he’s for and why he’s spending all this money. He doesn’t like the war in Iraq, it’s clear, and he really, really thinks Bush is “leading us in the wrong direction.” But I couldn’t find anything beyond well-worn anti-Bush clichés piled on one-another; none which will convince the as-yet unconvinced.
He hates Bush. Am I missing something else?
I’m all for Soros spending every billion he has saying whatever he wants to. But I feel certain that every dollar he spends will help raise five dollars in contributions for those who are just as convinced that “preemptive action” against those who, through their threats and actions, pose direct-danger to America, is a rationale and logical strategy.
I’m no pundit, but I predict Soros will do more harm to Kerry than to Bush by so blatantly making this a personal thing rather than funding organizations that have the appearance of being populist, grassroots movements like Moveon.org and Americans Coming Together. Making this appear to be a personal vendetta is too creepy for a lot of people, at least it is for people like me.
rexblog bumper music: Send in the Clowns (Judy Collins)
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