Thanks magazine people: Wow. I can’t say thank you enough for the e-mail and blog mentions (like this one from David Shaw) about my interview with Media Life
on why I love magazines. There are lots of people around who still love
the format if my e-mail is an indication. I was especially, well, I
don’t know the word (floored? pleasantly surprised? humbled? amazed?)
that some people in rather senior positions at a couple of well-known
(to say the least) magazine companies took time to e-mail me their
appreciation for what I said and to share a personal observation of
their passion for magazines.

Google upgrades local search: The updated Google local beta (does that make it the beta beta?) has lots of goodies baked in including reviews scraped from around the web. John Battelle overviews the new features.

More Martha photoshopping: Check out Worth 1000’s jail cell makeover and here. (via: Ken Leebow)

Thank you for remembering: Because of the Newsweek photoshopped cover “controversy,” several people have e-mailed me today recalling the June 13, 2002 post I made on the very first day of the Martha Stewart “scandal.” In one of my only “photo illustrations,” I did the above head of Martha on another person’s body. I don’t think I’ve done a photo illustration since.

Wow, that’s what being instalanched is like:
Actually, I have had the opportunity to be deconstructed by a community
of left-wingers who accused me of being an operative of Karl Rove, so
it’s nice to get a little taste from the other direction (see some of
the comments on the previous post). However, it’s also nice to see
someone like Greg Wallace make a post on his weblog that captures somewhat better my real point.

That point is that non-controversies like “links to campaign sites are
going to be banned by regulators” are like shouting wolf over and over
(Greg has a great list of them.). There are real threats to freedoms
and real fights with government agencies and real challenges to
bloggers that need to be fought. Every time I see one of these
fictitious threats flare up, I see it as a waste of time of both the
right and the left. For the life of me, I can’t think of a constiuency
for this “crackdown” on either end or at any point along the political
spectrum. Incumbants nor challengers benefit. Keeping citizens from
linking to the website of the candidates they support is not a winning
issue for any politician. However, if someone can find me a member of
congress who thinks his supporters should not be able to link to his
campaign website, then I’ll be glad to devote a portion of my blogging
efforts to sharing that strange point-of-view with his or her
constiuents.

Here’s a challenge to CNET - Prove there is a “coming crackdown on blogging”: Somebody at CNET has decided to put this ridiculous headline on an interview with a Federal Election Commissioner: 

Reading the story, the “crackdown” is a hypothetical, possibility of
maybe there being a chance perhaps that the FEC may try to place a
value on the link bloggers make to a candidate’s website and then
perhaps maybe try to treat those links as an unfair contribution.

If the columnist or anyone at CNET or anyone who is going to be
screaming about this today can produce one member of Congress who will
go on record supporting any such measure, I will head to the streets
along with anyone else who wants to protest this “coming crackdown.”

Produce that member of Congress who will support “cracking down on bloggers.”

Not a member of Congress who says the other Party wants to crack down on bloggers.

Not a member of Congress who says, “we need to look into this.”

Not a member of Congress who says, “the other Party is abusing this.”

But one member of Congress who says, “I’ve looked into this and I
support specific regulation and a specific new law that will crack down
on bloggers who link to a candidates website….”

If CNET can produce one member of Congress who will go on record saying
they support specific regulations by the FEC that crack down on
bloggers who link to a campaign website, then, and only then, will this
be more than another faux controversy.

Update: Finally, after all these years of wishing and hoping, I’ve been instalanched…where you’ll also find links to other views. (Background: instalanche)

Update II: I
fear this meme is going to turn into a cause that’s based on a strange
headline of an interview of hypothetical conjecture. (Right up there
with Congress is going to tax e-mail, or something) The exploration of
a theory — that blogger’s links have some monetary value and should be
treated as in-kind contributions — is merely that, an exercise in
hypothesis. Produce a member of Congress who says, specifically, they
believe the practice of linking to a campaign website should be banned
or fined or regulated, then I’m right there with you, brother. Hand me
my picket.

Martha 24/7: My print-version
of the WSJ this morning features a fascinating page-one story on Martha
Stewart’s prison stay based on letters with Stewart and inmates she
befriended during her “sabbatical” in West Virginia. On the back of the
front section is a full page CNBC ad that is a giant picture of a
smiling Martha. While I have blogged plenty about Martha Stewart since
the day the story broke
(warning: the photo you will see on that post was photoshopped by me
and that’s not really Martha Stewart’s body), I won’t be blogging her
coronation this weekend.

However, I predict that before this is all over, the promotion
departments of other media companies will be trying to figure out how
to encourage their CEOs to take time off for prison so they can tap
into all this post-incarceration-marketing strategy.

Ironically, the federal prosecutors who wanted to make Stewart an
“example” of something (I never quite figured it out as even they could
not find an insider-trading charge to pin on her) will end up
providing a few days of non-stop coverage of Stewart explaining how so
much is broken in the federal prosecution and penitentiary system.

Let your body move to the music: Vogue issues a press release saying it’s the biggest, baddest, thickest, heaviest, uh, biggest….whatever.